TARGET SLEEP · Boosting motor learning through sleep and targeted memory reactivation in ageing and Parkinson’s disease

Boosting motor learning through sleep and targeted memory reactivation in ageing and Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most prevalent degenerative brain disease, for which there is no cure. Rehabilitation is important for people with PD, whereby motor adaptations are learned to maintain daily functioning. However, patients often present difficulty consolidating the newly learned skills into their long-term memory, which reduces the benefits of training. Interventions that enhance motor memory consolidation are therefore projected to diminish the impact of PD. Sleep facilitates consolidation in healthy adults, especially in combination with targeted memory reactivation (TMR). TMR works by adding associated auditory stimuli during learning, which are replayed during sleep to reinforce the recently formed neural connections. Importantly, consolidation during sleep may be preserved in PD, but robust findings are lacking and have not involved TMR. My objective is to address this imperative by investigating the effect of sleep on motor memory consolidation by experimentally manipulating exposure to sleep and TMR. Concretely, I will compare the effect of a 2-hour daytime nap with or without TMR to that of a wake control period in PD and healthy age-matched controls. I will use a validated motor sequence learning task and apply neuroimaging techniques to study the neurophysiology underlying consolidation. My training objectives include teaching neuroscientific topics and research leadership development. I will also implement a rigorous dissemination and communication plan to achieve optimal societal impact of my research findings. I anticipate my project to spark new sleep interventions that boost the effectiveness of rehabilitation and improve the wellbeing of our ageing population, in particular those affected by PD. Unfortunately, the global COVID-19 pandemic has significantly delayed the progress of this project, which could therefore not achieve its final conclusions within the 2-year fellowship period (2020-2021). However, in that time the applicant was appointed as professor at the beneficiary institution (KU Leuven, Belgium) and will therefore be able to continue the project beyond the fellowship period.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union