62413 UCR Researcher heads $75 million DOD sleep study | Riverside News | PEcom - Press-Enterprise

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BY MARK MUCKENFUSS | STAFF WRITER | June 17 2013 1007 PM |

Home gt Local News gt Riverside County gt Riverside gt Riverside Headlines

UCR Researcher heads $75million DOD sleep study

DAVID BAUMANSTAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

UCR professor Maxim Bazhenov stands in front of the universitys Genomics building on Friday June14 2013 Bazhenov is helping to lead a study on the impact of sleep on memory funded with a $75million DOD grant

1 of 2

A UC Riverside researcher hopes to wake up a few years from now and remember the answersto the questions hersquos been asking

If the human brain works the way Maxim Bazhenov thinks it does and if the $75 million studyhersquos leading pays off he should be able to enjoy such an enlightened awakening

The Department of Defense announced last week that it would fund a five-year sleep study byBazhenov and researchers at UC San Diego the University of Arizona and Harvard Medical

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62413 UCR Researcher heads $75 million DOD sleep study | Riverside News | PEcom - Press-Enterprise

wwwpecomlocal-newsriverside-countyriversideriverside-headlines-index20130618-ucr-researcher-heads-75-million-dod-sleep-studyece 24

School Itrsquos one of the largest such studies ever conducted The goal is to understand how sleepcontributes to memory and learning and to possibly shed some light on sleep disorders

Bazhenov said it is one of the first times that a sleep study will combine information from bothhuman and animal brain activity Researchers at the University of Arizona are involved withmapping the brain activity of rats and in impact of sleep on retaining the knowledge of learnedtasks At Harvard researchers will be working with epileptic patients at Massachusetts GeneralHospital Bazhenov said compiling information gained from using electrodes to monitor brainactivity

Bazhenov said competition for the grant was strong

ldquoPretty much everybody in the US involved in sleep mdash about 10 teams mdash appliedrdquo he said

The DOD he added is interested in finding optimal models for sleep and performance

He is interested in learning whether human brains work the same as other mammalian brainsduring sleep

Studies on neural activity in rats and other animals he said have shown that the brain appears toreplay the dayrsquos events during periods of sleep During waking hours the hippocampus a smallregion near the base of the brain acts as a recorder

ldquoBy the end of the day itrsquos full of informationrdquo Bazhenov said ldquoAt night it uploads to the cortexrdquo

That replay he said takes place at about 10 times the speed of real time

ldquoItrsquos like that movie about sleeprdquo Bazhenov said referring to the film ldquoInceptionrdquo

But the brain doesnrsquot upload everything Somehow it filters out material that it decides isunimportant and discards it How that process takes place is a mystery

ldquoWe know sleep is importantrdquo Bazhenov said ldquoWe still donrsquot understand how it all worksrdquo

Perhaps thatrsquos part of the story behind the T-shirt he was wearing the day he was interviewedLettering across the navy blue shirt read ldquoLife would be easier if I had the source coderdquo

That code mdash the way the brain operates mdash hasnrsquot been cracked yet but progress in mapping thebrainrsquos activity and functions has accelerated in recent years

ldquoThere has been huge progress in the last couple of decadesrdquo Bazhenov said Prior to theproliferation of computers scientists were limited to using perhaps a handful of electrodes whenprobing the brains of animals ldquoNow we use hundreds of electrodesrdquo he said

In this study he said researchers want to do even more

ldquoWe want to model hundreds of thousands of neuronsrdquo he said perhaps as many as 1 million

One of the primary experiments will be testing what material is retained during the consolidationprocess when the hippocampus is communicating with the cortex during sleep Researchersplan to evaluate what the brain decides to keep based on rewarded behavior during the learningprocess For instance does the reward a rat receives when learning a particular maze influenceits memory of that maze after sleep And if so how much of a reward is necessary

Researchers will also be looking at the importance of the various stages of sleep in theconsolidation process and whether certain stages are more important than others

UC Riverside psychologist Sara Mednick also studies the connection between memory andsleep Mednick has been looking into the impact of various sleep-inducing drugs on memoryretention

Bazhenov said Mednick will serve as a consultant on the study If memory or learning seems tobe tied more to one stage of sleep than another he said he hopes to explore what happenswhen those stages are lengthened using various drugs

Of course the biggest question is whether any of this applies to human brains Unlike rats and

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other laboratory animals scientists canrsquot just ask a test subject if itrsquos OK to open its skull and stickit full of electrodes

ldquoThis replay (by the hippocampus) has never been shown in humansrdquo Bazhenov said ldquoMaybewe consolidate (memories) in a totally different wayrdquo

Itrsquos one of the questions hersquos hoping to answer with the study using other methods such asfunctional MRI which measures blood-oxygen levels related to neural activity rather than theelectrical activity itself

The research may shed light not only on memory and learning Bazhenov said but also on sleepdisorders

ldquoPotentially this project can help us understand whatrsquos going wrong when people cannot sleepor canrsquot remember thingsrdquo he said ldquoWersquore trying to understand basic properties of how it worksand what can be going wrongrdquo

What they likely wonrsquot be able to answer is the simplest question of all

ldquoConsolidation is I hope one of the important (elements) of sleeprdquo Bazhenov said But eventhough virtually every living thing does it to some extent he said ldquoWe still donrsquot know why wesleeprdquo

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wwwpecomlocal-newsriverside-countyriversideriverside-headlines-index20130618-ucr-researcher-heads-75-million-dod-sleep-studyece 44

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Jill Johnson‑Young middot Top Commenter middot Medical Social Worker at Companion Care HospiceI think thats awesome Think of all the neighbors who cant sleep because of UCR studentspartying and misbehaving who are already sleep deprived Perfect target Then we can proveactual and real damage from their behavior and force the city to finally enforce the lawsReply middot Like middot June 19 at 1156am

Alison L Eccleston middot Riverside Californiaeat food not junk that comes in boxesReply middot Like middot June 19 at 325pm