Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Associations among sleep disparities, hippocampal volume, and delayed recall

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Emily Hokett¹, Mohamad Alshikho¹, Patrick Lao¹, Dejania Cotton-Samuel¹, Jennifer J. Manly¹, Adam M. Brickman¹; ¹Columbia University

Sleep facilitates successful episodic memory encoding. Previous neuroimaging research has demonstrated poorer sleep (low sleep duration, poor sleep quality; sleep deprivation) is associated with lower encoding-related hippocampal activity and poorer episodic memory performance. The association among poor sleep, hippocampal volume, and episodic memory performance is understudied, particularly in Black and Hispanic adults who are at high risks of both poor sleep and poor brain health. Here, we analyzed cross-sectional associations among poorer self-reported sleep (low sleep duration and quality measured with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index), left hippocampal volume, and delayed word recall (Selective Reminding Test) in a community-based sample of Black, Hispanic, and White adults (27-77 years; n=323). We used multiple regression in all analyses. Across the full sample, we found a trending association between lower sleep duration and lower hippocampal volume. We found no reliable association between sleep quality and hippocampal volume in the full sample, but Hispanic adults showed a trending association between poorer sleep quality and lower hippocampal volume. Interestingly, we found no meaningful associations between hippocampal volume and episodic memory performance. Our preliminary findings suggest sleep duration and quality may be associated with hippocampal volumes, but to better understand neuroimaging correlates of disparities in cognitive health, we need more detailed neuroimaging assessments that are sensitive to subtle changes in midlife. In future analyses, we plan to assess hippocampal subregions (head, body, tail) and subfields (CA1-3, dentate gyrus, subiculum), as well as include other brain regions that contribute to successful memory encoding and retrieval (prefrontal cortex).

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic