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Improving Sleep via Phase-Locked Auditory Stimulation in Patients with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

                   

Team Leads

 

 

Our project aims to test whether PLAS can improve sleep, memory and other aspects of cognition in older adults with and without amnestic mild cognitive impairment. We will apply novel, deep-learning-based techniques to optimally detect the smaller-size slow waves that are characteristic of older adults.

Participants’ brainwaves will be recorded while they are sleeping, and a quiet tone will be presented in real time to coincide with the next slow wave, thereby increasing its size. After each experimental night, we will measure cognition, memory consolidation, and blood flow to the brain.

We hypothesize that these outcome measures will be improved after a night of PLAS, relative to control. We will examine PLAS in both the lab as well as the home environment, which could then lead to widespread use of this method in both healthy and at-risk older adults.

Collaborators

Dr. Adrian Owen (Departments of Psycholgy and Physiology and Pharmacology, Western University)

Dr. Stefan Kohler (Department of Psychology, Western University)

Dr. Stephen Pasternak (Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences, Western University)

Dr. Jaspreet Bhangu (Department of Medicine, Western University)

Project Highlights & Updates

Exciting progress is underway!

  • We're thrilled to welcome several new team members:
  • We’ve successfully completed piloting in the in-lab environment, and are actively piloting the at-home environment
  • Overnight testing sessions have officially kicked off in the lab, and we’ve already completed testing for half of our healthy control participants—a major milestone!