Gilles Vandewalle is Senior Researcher FNRS and Associate Professor at Sleep and Chronobiology Lab of Cyclotron Research Center of the’GIGA Institute of the’ULiège. His research, which uses neuroimaging, focuses on the physiology of sleep.
He will start working on the Sleep-Connection research project, financially supported by the Alzheimer Research Foundation thanks to a ” Standard Grant 2022 ” for a period of 3 years. One of the objectives is to know if the deterioration of the quality of sleep is linked to the (very) weak genetic predisposition to develop AD and can announce the arrival of the symptoms of the disease. One originality of the project is to include young adults, from the age of 20, that is to say people who, if they develop it, could only be affected by AD in 40 to 60 years. research by Gilles Vandewalle’s team is whether improving sleep can delay or even prevent it.
To conduct this research and better understand the role of sleep in the early brain damage linked to Alzheimer’s disease, Gilles Vandewalle plans to record the brain activity of 130 people when they are awake and during sleep. Recording the brain activity of these healthy adults, aged 20 to 70, will be linked to their genetic risk of developing the disease. The recording will be done through imagery by 7 Tesla functional magnetic resonance (7T fMRI) an ultra-sharp device, available at ULiège.
Here is a brief description by Gilles Vandewalle of his project:
” The SLEEP-CONNECTION project aims to study the link between sleep and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Sleep quality degrades during aging and the degree of sleep degradation is related to the risk of developing AD, making sleep a promising new target of intervention to prevent or delay AD. A full understanding of the mechanisms involved is, however, necessary before designing an effective intervention. The main objective of SLEEP-CONNECTION is to identify how the activity of brain networks during sleep can contribute to the early neuropathology of AD. […] The project will provide fundamental insights into the role of sleep in AD-related early brain alterations and the brain dysfunctions during sleep that can shape AD trajectories across the lifespan. “
Discover this research project on video.