Scholarship grant from FSS to NRU

Gitte Moos and Sebastian Holst have received a scholarship grant (103.000) from FSS for the project: 'Effects of sleep deprivation and adrenergic inhibition on glymphatic flow in humans'.

Short project summary:
Roughly a third of our life is spent asleep, yet the function(s) of sleep remain poorly understood. Recently, a novel molecular role for sleep was described in rodents. The ‘glymphatic system’ is a sleep dependent macroscopic pathway in the brain, which facilitates clearance of interstitial waste products. So far, the glymphatic system has only been described in rodents. Here, effects of the human glymphatic system will be investigated in two ways. First, we will apply the novel
MR protocol MREG (ultra-fast magnetic resonance encephalography) in both awake and sleeping subjects to show the existence of human glymphatic flow. Secondly, we will interfere with glymphatic flow by administering the adrenergic antagonist carvedilol in a placebo controlled, crossover manner immediately before MREG imaging. Thereby we will test the effects of enhanced glymphatic activity on sleep and wakefulness. Together the study will provide the first evidence for a sleep dependent human glymphatic system.