Title:Aging, Sleep and Sleepiness Self-Assessment, and the Underlying Drives
for Sleep and Wake
Volume: 16
Issue: 2
Author(s): Arcady A. Putilov*
Affiliation:
- Laboratory of Sleep/Wake Neurobiology, Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian
Academy of Sciences, 5A Butlerova Street, Moscow 117485, Russia
- Group of Biomedical Systems Math-modeling,
Research Institute for Molecular Biology and Biophysics of the Federal Research Centre for Fundamental and Translational
Medicine, 2, Timakova Street, 630117, Novosibirsk, Russia
Keywords:
Sleep-wake regulation, sleep disturbance, alertness, circadian age difference, EEG, sleepiness self-assessment.
Abstract: In 2016, a mini-issue of Current Aging Science (CAS) entitled “Effects of Aging on
Circadian and Sleep Timing” has been published to report the state of the art in the studies of the
effects of aging on the circadian and sleep regulating processes. The emphasis has been given to
the regulatory processes involved in age-specific problems with sleep timing, continuity, and duration.
Such problems can serve as targets for novel treatments for geriatric and sleep disorders. In
the following 6 years, some new findings provided further insight into the previously recognized
age-specific problems and highlighted new questions of research on the relation of aging to the
regulatory mechanisms underlying circadian rhythmicity, sleep, and sleepiness. The theoretic
framework of one of the directions of this research regards the interaction between the competing
drives for sleep and wake as one of the basic features of regulatory processes underlying circadian
rhythms, including such rhythms as the sleep-wake cycle and the diurnal variation in alertnesssleepiness
levels. Here, earlier and more recently highlighted questions of the research in this
framework were briefly reviewed.
