Cerebral Protein Synthesis During Sleep and Memory Consolidation

National Institute Of Mental Health

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Abstract

During the FY 2021 funding period, we addressed the following: In collaboration with our colleagues from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (T Balkin) and NINDS (D. Picchioni), we applied the L-1-C-11leucine positron emission tomography (PET) method to measure rCPS in humans during sleep. To address the restoration hypothesis of sleep, we measured rCPS in the same participant during sleep-sated wakefulness, sleep-deprived wakefulness, and sleep. We hypothesized that rCPS are increased during sleep, but that during sleep-deprived wakefulness, rCPS remain at levels comparable to sleep-sated wakefulness. Participants underwent the initial scan in the awake, sleep-sated state. Participants were then kept awake over the next 30 h and subsequently underwent a second PET scan in the sleep-deprived but awake state. Participants were then encouraged to sleep in the scanner while they underwent a third scan during slow wave sleep. Participants were healthy male and female volunteers between the ages of 18 and 28 y. We excluded participants with a history of neurological and psychiatric disorders, chronic medical conditions, and sleep disorders. We have analyzed rCPS for all scans from 15 subjects. Comparisons of mean rCPS among the three scans (sleep-sated awake, sleep-deprived awake, and sleep) indicate no differences among them. We have also considered that during the sleep scan, subjects spent some time awake, some time in REM sleep and most of the time in nonREM sleep divided between slow wave and non-slow wave stages. We estimated rCPS in slow wave and non-slow wave stages by a linear fit of measured rCPS values in the sleep-deprived awake and sleep scans and percent time spent in each sleep stage. Our preliminary estimates indicate increases in rCPS during slow wave sleep in some brain regions.