You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Hey, welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Andrevis Gontas. This is a podcast that explores the space

where science and society collide. We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it matters.

This week, we are airing an up-to-date episode where we talk about science in the news,

although, as our listeners know,

we are a COVID-free zone for the most part here at Inquiring Minds. So this news will have

nothing to do with COVID-19. Instead, we're going to talk about the news you might have missed because

you were scrolling through information about the coronavirus. Joining me is Adam Bristol. Welcome back,

Adam. Thanks so much for having me. So one of the things

that caught my eye this week is actually a study by a friend of ours. Okay, please. So Matt Walker is a

friend of ours who is also a sleep researcher at the University of California at Berkeley. We've actually

had him on inquiring minds before talking about his excellent book called Why We Sleep.

And he actually just, and his students, collaborators, published a study this week in

current biology in which they showed that the amount of deep sleep that is non-rapid eye

movement sleep that older adults engage in can predict a couple years

later the buildup of beta amyloid in their brains. Hmm. Okay. Interesting. So that's, you know,

important because the buildup of beta amyloid can be one of the precursors and one of the signs of

Alzheimer's disease.

And we know that in Alzheimer's disease, there are sleep disturbances.

So I think for a long time, we've wondered which is the chicken and which is the egg.

Is it that the degenerating brain causes sleep disturbances, which then also confound with the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease?

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