It is well known that duration, quality and cycle of sleep is important to daily function including learning, memory, mood, cardiometabolic function, and hormone regulation.
Restricted sleep and fragmented sleep not only impact brain function and memory but these problems can also shorten lifespan and increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Sleep disturbance may also result from a disrupted circadian clock, which is an internal timing system that involves a primary circadian pacemaker in the hypothalamus and numerous other tissue clocks and cellular clocks that must remain in coordination and synchrony with one another and with the environment. Circadian misalignment can result from mis-timed environmental signals (e.g., light) or behavior (e.g., arousals, substance use, diet and meal timing).
Our faculty seek to understand how sleep/circadian disruption impacts brain network oscillations, learning and memory, substance use, hormone rhythms, and blood pressure. An additional goal is to determine how disease diagnoses and environmental disruption impact sleep and circadian rhythms and thereby exacerbate disease symptoms and progression. Our research labs employ both animal models of disease in their research, as well as human participants. Both pre-clinical and clinical research employ state-of-the-art techniques such as fluorescence targeted patch clamp electrophysiology, real-time bioluminescent imaging, multimodal imaging, and novel biomarkers for retinal circadian function.
Leadership
Karen Gamble, Ph.D.
Program Lead
Professor
F. Cleveland Kinney Endowed Chair in Geriatric Psychiatry
Vice Chair for Basic Research
klgamble@uab.edu