The research will be presented at the 76th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, April 13-18, 2024.
It is unclear whether sleep apnea directly causes cognitive deficits or whether attention and memory problems are related to comorbidities.
Some researchers believe that the occasional drops in oxygen, abnormal blood flow, and neuroinflammation seen in people with sleep apnea may impair cognitive function.
Merrill was not involved in the research.
When people regularly get high-quality sleep, their brain health is protected and improved as they age.
A good night’s sleep allows brain function to repair and restore, Merrill says.
The brain has a specialized cleaning system, the glymphatic system, that gets rid of the waste that accumulates during the day.
Without quality sleep, the brain does not have the opportunity to rest and repair itself.
With sleep apnea, a person stops breathing intermittently during sleep.
In obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the muscles in the back of the neck relax too much, preventing normal breathing and potentially dangerous drops in oxygenation to the brain, Merrill says. Sometimes these tissues can block the airways, leading to a choking or snoring sound as the body reacts to the lack of air.
These sleep interruptions can occur dozens of times an hour, causing severe sleep deprivation in some people.
“Sleep disturbances alone can cause cognitive decline, but episodes of choking can also stress the heart, causing reduced blood flow to the brain,” says Thomas Kilkenny, DO, director of the Sleep Medicine Institute at Staten Island University Hospital. .
Kilkenny was not involved in the research.
These physiological events can result in cognitive decline, according to Kilkenny.
“Past meta-analytic studies suggest that conditions found in patients with OSA are consistently associated with impairments in attention, memory, executive function, psychomotor function, and language ability,” Kilkenny said.
