Why don't old people sleep well?

Scientists have found the cause of insomnia in the elderly

<url>American scientists have explained why older people suffer from insomnia and often wake up ahead of time.

The journal Brain reports on a group of inhibitory neurons whose deficiency leads to sleep disorder in the elderly (Lim et al., Sleep is related to neuron numbers in the ventrolateral preoptic/intermediate nucleus in older adults with and without Alzheimer's disease – VM). The study is briefly described in a press release (Study Explains Why Elderly Have Trouble Sleeping - VM) of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston).

In 1996, the Boston laboratory of neurophysiologist Clifford B. Saper discovered that the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus (a group of neurons) in rats acts as a "sleep lever": it disables the excitation of the central nervous system in rodents, allowing them to fall asleep. Experiments on animals have shown that the loss of these neurons leads to severe insomnia (sleep time has been halved).

There is a similar group of cells in the human brain – an intermediate nucleus. It is located in the same part of the brain and has the same inhibitory neurotransmitter (galanine) as the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus in rats. To prove the role of the intermediate core in sleep management, scientists turned to the data of the Rush project, during which, since 1997, the health status of thousands of patients from the age of 65 to their death has been monitored.

Seiper and his colleagues examined the brains of 45 recently deceased project participants, determined the number of inhibitory neurons at the time of death, and then studied the sleep patterns of patients in the last year of their lives.

An inverse functional relationship was found between the number of ventrolateral preoptic neurons and sleep disorders: the fewer neurons, the more "fragmented" patients' sleep was. The owners of the minimum of such cells (less than three thousand) lay quietly in bed for less than 40 percent of the total time spent on night rest (the rest of the hours they tossed and walked around the room).

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru21.08.2014