CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN
COGNITION & NEUROSCIENCES/ConnexConnex

Sleep and wakefulness are regulated through interactions between cortical and subcortical structures. This complex interplay has mostly been established in animal models, however, and translation to human beings is not straightforward. The presentation is intended to provide an overview of the recent work we conducted in our lab using MRI, PET and EEG, genetic and/or cognitive tests to gain novel insights on the regulation of sleep and wakefulness and its importance for brain health in humans.
Light exposure is a simple means to affect the subcortical circuits of sleep and wakefulness, and the first part of the presentation will focus on recent studies using 7 Tesla MRI to dissect in part the impact of light on subparts of the hypothalamus and amygdala and on the locus coeruleus.
The second part of the presentation will summarize studies interested in the emerging bidirectional detrimental links between sleep quality and neurodegeneration. We recently reported that sleep electrophysiology markers are associated with amyloid beta burden, as assessed though PET scans, and with the polygenic risk for developing neurodegenerative diseases, up to 3 to 5 decades prior to the typical onset of disease symptoms.
The final part of the presentation, we focus mainly, again, on the locus coeruleus as it may be key to the links between neurodegeneration and sleep. We recently reported that the activity and structure of the LC are associated with features of both rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep.