Sleep evoked delta frequency responses show a linear decline in amplitude across the adult lifespan

Abstract

Aging is associated with many changes in sleep, with one of the most prominent being a reduction in slow wave sleep. Traditional measures of this phenomenon rely on spontaneous activity and typically confound the incidence and amplitude of delta waves. The measurement of evoked K-complexes during sleep, enable separate assessment of incidence and amplitude taken from the averaged K-complex waveform. The present study describes data from 70 normal healthy men and women aged between 19 and 78 years. K-Complexes were evoked using short auditory tones and recorded from a midline array of scalp sites. Significant reductions with age were seen in the amplitude of the N550 component of the averaged..