Sleep ‘can help improve memory for Parkinson’s sufferers’

Sleeping properly can help to mitigate the impact of Parkinson's disease on a patient's working memory, according to a new US study.

Scientists at the Emory University School of Medicine found that people with Parkinson's disease performed significantly better on a test of working memory after a night's sleep, while disorders such as sleep apnoea were shown to interfere with this effect.

The performance boost among patients was linked to the amount of slow wave sleep, the deepest form of sleep, as this type of rest is thought to be beneficial to synaptic plasticity, the ability of brain cells to reorganise themselves and make new connections.

Postdoctoral fellow Michael Scullin, who is the first author of the paper, said: "It was known already that sleep is beneficial for memory, but here, we've been able to analyse what aspects of sleep are required for the improvements in working memory performance."

The team now hopes to carry out an expanded study involving healthy elderly people, as well as patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

Earlier this month, the University of California – San Francisco suggested that losing sleep could have a negative impact on the effectiveness of vaccines.