The regulatory role of sleep for food intake and energy metabolism, project B07

Principal Investigator:Prof. Dr. Kerstin M. Oltmanns

PD Dr. Christian Benedict
Project staffAlexia Friedrich
M. Sc. oec. troph. Nina Herzog
Dr. med. Georg Gohla
Dipl.-Phys. Jan Christian Martens

Sleep supports the consolidation of cognitive and behavioral memory contents. This project will examine whether sleep also enhances memory formation regarding metabolic stimuli, i.e. food intake and energy status in healthy subjects. We assume that sleep influences appetite and eating habits, as well as hormonal appetite regulation and energy consumption in the following wake phase in dependence of duration, sleep-architecture, and previous food intake as a result of nightly memory formation for these aspects of food intake. In analogy to learning cognitive and behavioral contents is this process dependent on sleep stages, and is mostly conveyed by delta sleep. In contrast, sleep deprivation inhibits this kind of metabolic memory formation.