Berlin - Getting less deep sleep with advancing age may be partly responsible for older people's poorer memories, the Berlin- based German Neurological Society (DGN) reported. Deep sleep was important for the consolidation of memory, it noted.
According to the DGN, a person's sleep patterns change over the years. Young people 25 years old or younger spend about 19 per cent of their sleep in the deep-sleep phase, which drops to about 3 per cent between the ages of 36 and 50.
The DGN said that young adults spent more than an hour in deep sleep during the first half of the night, when sleep was especially deep. For older ones, however, the time was just 18 minutes.
People with persistent sleep disorders also have abbreviated deep sleep, impairing their ability to mentally store things they have learned during waking hours.
