Towards therapeutic modulation of amyloid beta clearance from the brain during sleep

Evidence is building that sleep disturbances in healthy people, repeated over years, might trigger or accelerate pathological processes leading to dementia, e.g. by causing oxidative stress or enhancing amyloid deposition. The project will address how sleep influences the initiation and progression of the neuropathology of Alzheimer's disease. We are interested particularly in understanding the earliest events responsible for driving the onset of disease pathology in people at risk. The work will focus on questions such as: By what mechanism(s) do soluble amyloid levels decrease in NREM sleep? Does chronic sleep deprivation hinder microglia responses or down regulate their ability to tackle amyloid plaques?