Celia Kjærby
Center for Translational Neuromedicine, UCPH
“The role of sleep micro-architecture in memory performance during health and disease”
Abstract: Sleep is fundamental for the maintenance of daily cognitive performance. Sleep is not a homogeneous brain state but composed of dynamic micro-architectural structures such as short arousals, which are increasingly recognized as an integral part of normal sleep. We recently discovered that during healthy sleep, the brain’s arousal nucleus, the locus coeruleus (LC), display rhythmic activity, creating an oscillatory wave of norepinephrine during NREM sleep essential for memory consolidation processes. Deficits in this LC-induced sleep micro-architecture could exist even though the overall sleep duration remained the same and these ‘hidden’ sleep deficits had detrimental effects on cognitive performance. While sleep quality declines with age and in Alzheimer's disease, the causal relationship to cognitive decline is not clear. My current research aims to determine if microarchitectural sleep disturbances caused by LC degeneration play a role in the pathogenesis of cognitive decline in aging and Alzheimer’s disease. I will focus on developing novel therapeutic strategies and diagnostic markers focusing on sleep micro-architecture, with the ultimate goal of preserving cognitive function in these conditions.
Peter C. Petersen
Department of Neuroscience, UCPH
“How the brain navigates in space and time using the hippocampal system”
Abstract: Our lab was founded the goal to understand the neuronal mechanisms involved in memory and cognition and how imbalances in the circuits can lead to pathological conditions. In particular, we study spatial memory, and theta oscillations in behaving rats, and how the distributed populations of neurons across the distributed brain circuits central to memory, are coordinating their dynamics to generate complex cognitive functions in awake rodents.