Kjaerby Lab: Division of Sleep-Arousal State Transitions

Research Overview:

Sleep is essential for cognitive performance and it is well established that impaired sleep reduces cognition. Sleep is not a homogeneous brain state, but composed of several micro-structures regulated by many regions within the brain. In recent years, short arousals have been recognized as an integral part of normal sleep adding to the complexity of sleep. I am interested in determining the impact of these frequent sleep-arousal transitions on shaping restorative sleep processes related to both memory consolidation and waste clearance. Sleep disturbances are a large component of many neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders and exploring novel therapeutic strategies related to regulation of sleep-arousal transitions can potentially arrest cognitive decline for these disorders.