How your dreams can tell you if youre at greater risk for dementia

People who take longer to get to the dreaming part of the sleep cycle are more likely to develop dementia, a new study suggests.Taking longer to enter the dream phase — known as rapid eye movement or REM — can disrupt the ability to consolidate memories and interfere with emotion regulation, say scientists.Recent studies have shown that both the quality and the amount of sleep we get may influence our risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.Now, new research suggests that people who take “significantly longer” to start REM may be experiencing an early symptom of the disease.Researchers explained that REM follows three phases of non-REM sleep, each deeper than the last.The four phases take 90 minutes or more to complete, depending on age, and a person may cycle through them four or five times in a typical night.Older people take longer to reach REM.During REM sleep the brain processes memories, especially those that are emotionally charged, and puts them into long-term storage.“The delay in REM sleep disrupts the brain’s ability to consolidate memories by interfering with the process that contributes to learning and memory,” said study co-senior author Professor Yue Leng, of the University of California, San Francisco“If it is insufficient or delayed, it may increase the stress hormone cortisol.

This can impair the brain’s hippocampus, a critical structure for memory consolidation.”Researchers followed 128 people with an average age of 70 from the neurology unit of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing.Half had Alzheimer’s, and around a third had mild cognitive impairment, a frequent precursor to Alzheimer’s.

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Never miss a story.The participants in the study slept overnight in the clinic so researchers could m...