Sleep and executive functions in older adults: A systematic review

Abstract

Introduction: A recent increase in studies suggests a role of age-related sleep changes in executive functions (EF). However, this relationship remains unclear and mixed results have emerged. Objective: To investigate how age-related sleep changes may play an important role in the extent to which healthy older adults exhibit decline in EF. Methods: A systematic strategy was employed to identify the available literature on age-related sleep changes and EF. Results: Of the 465 studies identified, 26 were included. Results suggest that multiple sleep parameters differ in the way they benefit or impair EF. Parameters such as greater wake after sleep onset and lower sleep efficiency, in addition to circadian fragmentation of sleep, showed more consistent results and are potentially correlated with worsening in EF measures. However, other results seem inconclusive. Conclusion: These findings were discussed based on the prefrontal circuitry vulnerability model, in which sleep has been identified as a beneficial factor for prefrontal cortex functioning and hence for EF, which relies mostly on this brain area and its related networks.

Daily Assessment of Executive Functioning and Expressive Suppression Predict Daily Functioning among Community-Dwelling Older Adults

“…Although increases in intra-individual variability (i.e., greater cognitive fluctuations) can be indicative of cognitive declines (Gamaldo & Allaire, 2016), even healthy older adults experience greater EF fluctuations than younger adults (Strauss, MacDonald, Hunter, Moll, & Hultsch, 2019). Such fluctuations can be exacerbated by a variety of contextual factors, such as experience of pain, quality of sleep, and engagement in burdensome emotion regulation (e.g., Franchow & Suchy, 2017;Higgins, Martin, Baker, Vasterling, & Risbrough, 2017;Holanda, de Almondes, & Almondes, 2016;Niermeyer & Suchy, 2020a).…”

Sleep quality and sleep duration predict brain microstructure among community-dwelling older adults

“…Microstructural abnormalities in limbic structures such as the amygdala, hippocampus, and fornix may disturb communication between sleep circuitry and memory consolidation networks, possibly explaining well-documented links between poor sleep quality and memory decline ( Cruz et al, 2019 ). Furthermore, ATR and SCS fibers projecting from the thalamus and striatum to frontal neocortex may facilitate the link between sleep-regulating circuitry ( Vetrivelan et al, 2010 ) and frontal regions involved in higher-order cognitive functions such as executive function, for which sleep plays a crucial supportive role by preserving the structural integrity of frontal networks ( Holanda and de Almondes, 2016 ).…”

Cognitive and structural predictors of novel task learning, and contextual predictors of time series of daily task performance during the learning period

“…Additionally, there are likely undetected moderators which partially determine whether a given participant's performance is influenced by a given psychosocial context variable or sleep, which are important to further investigate considering how pervasive the influence of these psychosocial context variables and sleep are on cognition. Considering the well-documented negative impact of disrupted sleep (Holanda Júnior and de Almondes, 2016;Lo et al, 2016;Rana et al, 2018;Zavecz et al, 2020) and high stress (Shields et al, 2016;Plieger and Reuter, 2020) on cognitively demanding tasks in the real world, understanding what variables may moderate this relationship is of substantial real-world importance. The results of the present study indicate that sleep and the psychosocial context variables examined in this study can have an impact on the performance and learning of complex tasks, which is warranted enough for further investigation.…”