Age trends in the sleep EEG of healthy older men and women

SUMMARY  The all‐night sleep EEGs of 314 (191 women, 123 men) healthy older subjects between the ages of 45 and 90 were studied for age trends in the power spectra of the all‐night NREM sleep EEG. Power spectra of the unnormalized EEG of the women show a power loss in the delta band and a power increase in the beta band with increasing age. For the men no significant trends in the power spectra of the unnormalized EEG were in evidence. A normalization of the power spectra was performed by referencing each logarithmically expressed spectra to its area between 2 Hz and 30 Hz. For both genders the normalized spectra show significant decreases in power at many frequencies below 16 Hz and significant increases in power at frequencies above 18 Hz with increasing age. The age trends observed in the spectra of this population (45‐90y age group) are about a third of the magnitude of those reported in the literature for subjects between the ages of 20y and 40y.

[1]  M. Vitiello,et al.  Successful recruitment of elderly community-dwelling subjects for Alzheimer's disease research. , 1988, Journal of gerontology.

[2]  D. B. Preston.  Spectral Analysis and Time Series , 1983 .

[3]  L H Larsen,et al.  EKG artifacts suppression from the EEG. , 1991, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[4]  P N Prinz,et al.  Sleep disturbances in patients with mild-stage Alzheimer's disease. , 1990, Journal of gerontology.

[5]  A. Borbély.  A two process model of sleep regulation. , 1982, Human neurobiology.

[6]  Chris Chatfield,et al.  The Analysis of Time Series: An Introduction , 1981 .

[7]  V. R. Carlson,et al.  Sleep Variables as a Function of Age in Man , 1968 .

[8]  M. Vitiello,et al.  C STAGE, automated sleep scoring: development and comparison with human sleep scoring for healthy older men and women. , 1994, Sleep.

[9]  H. Agnew,et al.  Stage 4 Sleep: Influence of Time Course Variables , 1971, Science.

[10]  Domien G. M. Beersma,et al.  All night spectral analysis of EEG sleep in young adult and middle-aged male subjects , 1989, Neurobiology of Aging.

[11]  D. Kupfer,et al.  Sleep of healthy seniors: a revisit. , 1985, Sleep.

[12]  W. B. Webb.  Sleep in older persons: sleep structures of 50- to 60-year-old men and women. , 1982, Journal of gerontology.

[13]  Alan V. Oppenheim,et al.  Discrete-Time Signal Pro-cessing , 1989 .

[14]  J. R. Smith,et al.  Sleep spindle characteristics as a function of age. , 1982, Sleep.

[15]  D. Dijk,et al.  Sex differences in the sleep EEG of young adults: visual scoring and spectral analysis. , 1989, Sleep.

[16]  P. Prinz,et al.  Quantitative analysis of the EEG during tonic REM sleep--methodology. , 1992, Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology.

[17]  D. Kupfer,et al.  Effects of age on delta and REM sleep parameters. , 1989, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[18]  Daniel J Buysse,et al.  Electroencephalographic sleep in the healthy "old old": a comparison with the "young old" in visually scored and automated measures. , 1991, Journal of gerontology.

[19]  R. Gerard,et al.  BRAIN POTENTIALS DURING SLEEP , 1937 .

[20]  Daniel J Buysse,et al.  Sleep, gender, and depression: An analysis of gender effects on the electroencephalographic sleep of 302 depressed outpatients , 1990, Biological Psychiatry.

[21]  M. Carskadon,et al.  Sleep loss in elderly volunteers. , 1985, Sleep.

[22]  A. Borbély,et al.  All‐night dynamics of the human sleep EEG , 1993, Journal of sleep research.

[23]  P N Prinz,et al.  A note on the night-to-night stability of stages 3 + 4 sleep in healthy older adults: a comparison of visual and spectral evaluations of stages 3 + 4 sleep. , 1995, Sleep.

[24]  I Feinberg,et al.  Changes in sleep cycle patterns with age. , 1974, Journal of psychiatric research.

[25]  D. Bliwise,et al.  Individual differences in stages 3 and 4 sleep. , 1987, Psychophysiology.

[26]  Miles Le,et al.  Sleep and aging. , 1980 .