Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6810827 | Neurobiology of Aging | 2010 | 10 Pages |
Abstract
Aging is associated with many changes in sleep, with one of the most prominent being a reduction in slow wave sleep. Traditional measures of this phenomenon rely on spontaneous activity and typically confound the incidence and amplitude of delta waves. The measurement of evoked K-complexes during sleep, enable separate assessment of incidence and amplitude taken from the averaged K-complex waveform. The present study describes data from 70 normal healthy men and women aged between 19 and 78 years. K-Complexes were evoked using short auditory tones and recorded from a midline array of scalp sites. Significant reductions with age were seen in the amplitude of the N550 component of the averaged waveform, which represents the amplitude of the K-complex, with linear regression analysis indicating approximately 50% of the variance was due to age. Smaller, yet still significant reductions were seen in the ability to elicit K-complexes. The data highlight the utility of evoked K-complexes as a sensitive marker of brain aging in men and women.
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Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Ageing
Authors
Ian M. Colrain, Kate E. Crowley, Christian L. Nicholas, Lamia Afifi, Fiona C. Baker, Mayra Padilla, Sharon R. Turlington, John Trinder,