Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Many young adults get less amount of sleep during the night due to work or lifestyle. This can cause tiredness, drowsiness and forgetfulness the next day. Physical exercise is an easily accessible and cheap intervention for boosting sleep and memory. Research now shows that a combination of exercise and a brief period of daytime sleep or nap benefits memory in young people with good sleeping habits. However, how short-term exercise may boost memory when people do not have enough sleep has not been well-studied. This study will assess if a single session of an exercise will improve memory in young people who will have their night's sleep shortened. A total of 120 volunteers between 18 and 35 years old will be invited to take part in the study. Volunteers will be put into four groups where they will either be asked to perform brisk cycling for 30 minutes or remain resting for the same amount of time. They will then be shown faces with names to learn them for an immediate retest and a delayed recall to assess their long-term memory. After the immediate retest, volunteers will be asked to have either a 4.5-h or 8.5-h overnight sleep. They will be monitored and their sleep recorded with a set of sleep equipment. Volunteers will complete a memory test in the morning following the night. Here, they will be required to determine whether a name matches the correct face as studied the previous night or is new. The main outcomes will be how well they will recall or correctly match faces and their names as a measure of their long-term memory retention. It is anticipated that the exercise will improve memory and protect against forgetfulness in the volunteers with short sleep. The research findings will be relevant for developing specific interventions for improving sleep, physical activity and cognitive health of people with short sleep as a result of lifestyle or work and sleep disorders.