Sleep neuroscience and novel biomarkers

Insufficient sleep has a significant negative impact on human physical and mental health and ability to function. However, people respond in vastly different ways to sleep loss and sleep disorders. We want to learn why.

Sleep neuroscience refers to the effect of sleep on the brain and nervous system in the body. Rapid scientific and technical advances have enabled reliable and affordable measurement of sleep neurophysiology. Individual variability in performance and impacts of sleep loss will reflect biological variability in sleep and circadian control systems along with a range of other lifestyle and genetic factors. A range of physiological measures based in neuroscience are needed to understand many of these mechanisms, including why some people cope with sleep loss and sleep disorders that predict poor health outcomes better than others.

OUR RESEARCH

Our research aims to discover and validate new neural, behavioural and biological biomarkers to help predict how an individual will respond to sleep loss or sleep disorders. We can then use these biomarkers to develop clinically deployable tools to identify people at high risk of poor cognitive and mental health outcomes and risk of alertness failure and sleep-related performance impairment on the road and at work.

These tools could provide early screening of people at higher risk of poor cognitive and mental health outcomes and prevent potentially fatal work or motor vehicle accidents caused by sleep loss or disorder.

One of the new methods being used includes tri-concentric ring electrodes (TCRE) for recording brain electrical activity from more localised areas of the brain and with much less muscle artefact than traditional electrode systems.

We are also developing new signal processing methods are also being applied to develop novel biomarkers that are more sensitive to sleep disruption compared to traditional sleep scoring methods.

Research projects

NHMRC funded projects investigating new, simple and cost-effective clinical tools that can be used routinely in all patients to assist clinicians and policy makers to assess alertness failure and accident risk in OSA.
Australian Government Research Network for Undersea Decision Superiority into optimal lighting on participant’s body clocks, sleep, and work performance.
Australian Government Research Network for Undersea Decision Superiority into optimal lighting on participant’s body clocks, sleep, and work performance.
Commonwealth funded project to evaluate and validate a new vestibular-ocular measurement device using virtual reality goggles to identify driver fatigue for use in road-side testing applications.
CRC for Alertness, Safety and Productivity funded project to pilot test in-mattress sensors to quantify sleep.
CRC for Alertness, Safety and Productivity funded project development of a CRC Sleep Health Decision support system for practitioners.
Flinders Foundation Seed Grant investigating the effectiveness of CPAP treatment to reduce fall risk in older people with obstructive sleep apnea.
And a NHMRC targeted funding recent large study investigated wind farm compared to road traffic noise effects on sleep that is underpinning other noise related projects.

Featured publications

B. Lechat, G. R. Naik, A. Reynolds, A. Atqiya, H. Scott, K. Loffler, A. Vakulin, P. Escourrou, D. McEvoy, R. Adams, P. Catcheside and D. Eckert, "Multi-night prevalence, variability, and diagnostic misclassification of obstructive sleep apnea", American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, (Accepted for publication) November - 2021.
B. Lechat, H. Scott, G. R. Naik, K. Hansen, D. Nguyen, A. Vakulin, P. Catcheside, and D. Eckert, "New and Emerging Approaches to Better Define Sleep Disruption and Its Consequences," Frontiers in Neuroscience, pp. 1330, October - 2021.
G. R. Naik, G. D. Gargiulo, J. M. Serrador and P. P. Breen, "Groundtruth: A MATLAB GUI for Artifact and Feature Identification in Physiological signals," Frontiers in Physiology, August – 2019.
Lechat B, Hirotsu C, Appleton S, Younes M, Adams RJ, Vakulin A, Hansen K, Zajamsek B, Wittert G, Catcheside P, Heinzer R, Eckert DJ. A novel EEG marker predicts perceived sleepiness and poor sleep quality. SLEEP. 2022 Mar 4:zsac051. doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsac051. Online ahead of print.
Parker JL, Appleton SL, Melaku YA, D'Rozario AL, Wittert GA, Martin SA, Toson B, Catcheside PG, Lechat B, Teare AJ, Adams RJ, Vakulin A. The association between sleep microarchitecture and cognitive function in middle-aged and older men: a community-based cohort study. J Clin Sleep Med. 2022 Feb 17. doi: 10.5664/jcsm.9934. Online ahead of print.
D’Rozario AL, Hoyos CM, Wong KKH, Unger G, Kim JW, Vakulin A, Kao CHT, Naismith SL, Bartlett DJ, Grunstein RR. Improvements in Cognitive Function and Quantitative Sleep EEG in OSA after Six Months of CPAP Treatment, SLEEP, 2022 an 13:zsac013. doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsac013.
Stevens D, D'Rozario A, Openshaw H, Bartlett D, Rae CD, Catcheside P, Wong K, McEvoy RD, Grunstein RR, Vakulin A. Clinical predictors of working memory performance in obstructive sleep apnoea patients before and during extended wakefulness. SLEEP, 2022 Dec 13:zsab289. doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsab289.
Parker J, Melaku Y, D’Rozario AL, Wittert GA, Martin SA, Catcheside PG, Lechat B, Teare AJ, Adams RJ, Appleton SL, Vakulin A. The association between obstructive sleep apnea and sleep spindles in middle-aged and older men: A community-based cohort study. SLEEP, 2021 Nov 29:zsab282. doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsab28.
Dunbar C, Catcheside P, Lechat B, Hansen K, Zajamsek B, Liebich T, Nguyen DP, Scott H, Lack L, Decup F, Vakulin A, Micic G. EEG power spectral responses to wind farm compared to road traffic noise during sleep: A laboratory study. Journal of Sleep Research, 2021 Nov 13:e13517. doi: 10.1111/jsr.13517.
Lechat B, Hansen KL, Melaku YA, Vakulin A, Micic M, Adams RJ, Catcheside PG and Zajamsek B. A novel EEG derived measure of disrupted delta wave activity during sleep predicts all-cause mortality risk, Ann Am Thorac Soc, 2021 Oct 21. doi: 10.1513/AnnalsATS.202103-315OC. Online ahead of print.
Vakulin A, Green MA, D'Rozario AL, Stevens D, Openshaw H, Bartlett D, Wong K, McEvoy RD, Grunstein RR, Rae CD. Brain mitochondrial dysfunction and driving simulator performance in untreated obstructive sleep apnea. J Sleep Res. 2021 Sep 15:e13482. doi: 10.1111/jsr.13482.
Cori JM, Gordon C, Jackson ML, Collins A, Philip R, Stevens D, Naqvi A, Hosking R, Anderson C, Barnes M, Howard ME, Vakulin A. The impact of aging on driving performance in patients with untreated obstructive sleep apnea. Sleep Health. 2021 Aug 31:S2352-7218(21)00163-7. doi: 10.1016/j.sleh.2021.07.005.
Parker JL, Appleton SL, Melaku YA, Stevens D, Wittert GA, Martin S, Adams RJ, Vakulin A. Sleep macroarchitecture but not obstructive sleep apnea is independently associated with cognitive function in only older men of a population-based cohort. J Sleep Res. 2021 Apr 22:e13370. doi: 10.1111/jsr.13370.
Stevens D, Leong CWY, Cheung H, Arciuli J, Vakulin A, Kim JW, Openshaw HD, Rae CD, Wong KKH, Dijk DJ, Leow JWS, Saini B, Grunstein RR, D’Rozario AL. Sleep spindle activity correlates with implicit statistical learning consolidation in untreated obstructive sleep apnea patients. Sleep Medicine. 2021 Oct;86:126-134. doi: 10.1016/j.sleep.2021.01.035.3.
Cori JM, Turner S, Westlake J, Naqvi A, Ftouni S, Wilkinson V, Vakulin A, O’Donoghue, Howard ME. Eye blink parameters to indicate drowsiness during naturalistic driving in participants with obstructive sleep apnoea: a pilot study. Sleep Health, 2021 Apr 29:S2352-7218(21)00057-7. Doi 10.1016/j.sleh.2021.01.009.

Resources

Youtube video: Associate Professor Andrew Vakulin speaks about the research and possible research opportunities for collaborations and PhD candidates.

Sleeptite Wesbite

GROUP MEMBERS

Associate Professor Andrew Vakulin
Research theme Co-lead

Research focuses on development and validation of biomarkers to identify people’s vulnerability to sleep loss and sleep disorders. The goal of this research is to deploy biomarker screening tools to help clinicians identify people at higher risk of alertness failure and performance impairment for fitness to drive and operational environments to ultimately reduce sleepiness related accidents. This research increasingly utilises novel wearable and nearable technology to help profile people’s sleep in the home environment and how they respond to insufficient sleep or sleep disorders from a cognitive function and operational performance perspective.

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Dr Ganesh Naik
Research theme Co-lead

Research expertise in wearables, machine learning, and Biomedical signal processing. Currently developing novel algorithms and methods for upper airway collapsibility, sleep disordered breathing, sleep apnoea, and cardiorespiratory applications. Key research activities include automated upper airway collapsibility and EMG reflex analysis for analysing sleep breathing disorder data, a novel method to extract vital sleep parameters from sleep reports and the development of "Groundtruth GUI," an open-source MATLAB tool for artifact identification/removal from various physiological signals.

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Professor Danny Eckert, Director FHMRI Sleep Health, Matthew Flinders Professor

Professor Peter Catcheside

Dr Nicole Lovato

Dr Bastien Lechat,
Research Fellow

Mandy O’Grady,
Research Assistant

Kelsey Bickley,
Research Assistant

Jesse Parker,
PhD Candidate

Claire Dunbar,
PhD Candidate

WORK WITH US

We have long-term international and Australian sleep health partnerships across universities, South Australian Local Health Network and with industry groups. Please contact us to discuss opportunities.

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