How does sleep affect your chance of brain disease?

Why we sleep and what happens to the brain during sleep remain very open questions. However, we now know that many different physiological processes take place during sleep, thanks to a large recent increase in available experimental data, for example through measurements of brain blood flow, electrical activity and other parameters. We also know that poor sleep patterns are related to higher risks of brain diseases such as dementia. However, how changes in individual daily sleep patterns affect a lifetime risk of brain disease is not well understood due to the fact that these take place over such different time scales (hours and decades respectively).

In this PhD, we will develop the first multi scale mathematical model of sleep and its effects on whole-life changes in parameters such as brain blood flow. This will build on our recent multi scale models of exercise and how this also affects whole-life changes in brain physiology, exploiting new models of the brain and multiple scales analysis methods. There will be the opportunity to collaborate widely across Europe with other modelling and physiology groups, to build the first model of whole-life sleep effects and to use this to understand better how and why different sleep patterns have different effects on individuals.