Could 'Extra Sleep' Stall Memory Problems From Alzheimer's?

Extra sleep may help prevent the risk of Alzheimer's disease, according to recent findings published in the journal Current Biology.

As previous studies have examined the duration of sleep and memory quality, the latest findings suggest that extra sleep could be beneficial in treating certain neurodegenerative illnesses.

The study focused on three groups of fruit flies that scientists manipulated by disabling different critical memory genes.

One group developed a condition with similar characteristics to Alzheimer's disease while another dealt with problems reinforcing new connections that encode memories and a third group had two many neuronal connections.

"Our data showed that extra sleep can handle any of these problems," senior author Paul Shaw, PhD, associate professor of neurobiology, said in a news release. "It has to be the right kind of sleep, and we're not sure how to induce this kind of slumber in the human brain yet, but our research suggests that if we can learn how, it could have significant therapeutic potential."

The study revealed that three to four hours of extra sleep daily over as little as two days helped restore memory capacity in all three groups.

"In all of these flies, the lost or disabled gene still does not work properly," concluded lead author Stephane Dissel, PhD, a senior scientist in Shaw's lab. "Sleep can't bring that missing gene back, but it finds ways to work around the physiological problem."