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In our next Researcher Live series, we will be focusing on ‘Sleep & Memory’ – bringing you four fantastic speakers.

 

Join our third episode on 17th November at 4 pm BST for a talk with Dr Scott Cairney, University of York. Sign up here to receive email reminders for this series.

 

What are we going to talk about in this episode?

 

Chronic sleep deprivation is a worldwide problem and a major risk factor for depression, anxiety and psychosis. In this talk, Dr Scott Cairney will outline his recent discoveries about the biological and cognitive processes through which sleep disturbances give rise to mental health problems, and how these could be remediated via sleep-based intervention. 

 

The first part of the talk will focus on sleep’s role in preventing intrusive memories, which emerge as distressing images or thoughts and are a common feature of various psychiatric disorders. 

 

Dr Cairney will draw on his research using functional brain imaging and psychophysiology to outline how an absence of sleep compromises our ability to keep intrusive memories at bay, and leads to impaired emotion regulation.

 

In the second part of the talk, Dr Cairney will turn to the effects of sleep deprivation on learning and memory. He will describe recent work from his lab showing that a night of sleep deprivation not only disrupts the neural signature of learning, but leads to a compensatory change in the pathways through which the brain encodes new information. 

 

Finally, Dr Cairney will describe a recent project that has used non-invasive methods to entrain particular brain rhythms during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and slow-wave sleep, and how these methods might be used to overturn the disruptive influences of chronic sleep loss.

 

Series programme:

 

  • 15th November, 10 am BST - ‘Reactivating memories in sleep and dreams’ with Dr Anthony Bloxham, Nottingham Trent University.

 

  • 17th November, 11 am BST – ‘Emotion regulation and Targeted Memory Reactivation in healthy controls and isolated REM Behaviour Disorder patients’ with Caterina Leitner, Sleep Medicine Centre of San Raffaele hospital

 

  • 17th November, 4 pm BST – ‘Why we don’t do well without sleepwith Dr Scott Cairney, University of York

 

  • 18th November, 3 pm BST – ‘Evolving plasticity in the brain and behaviour after memory reactivation during sleep with Dr Martyna Rakowska, Cardiff University
Date and Time
Thursday, November 17, 2022
04:00 pm - 05:00 pm GMT+0
Speakers Avatar Dr Scott Cairney

 

Dr Cairney obtained his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Professor Penny Lewis. In 2012, he moved to the University of York to work with Professor Gareth Gaskell on an ESRC-funded project investigating memory reactivation in sleep. He went on to win independent fellowships from the Wellcome Trust and MRC to set up his own research programme focusing on the mental health function of sleep, and is now an Associate Professor at the University of York.

DOI: 6xbpJWaNNNoepY0pEia2_prepost_4

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