Associate professor at CFIN, Brian Hansen has received DKK 590,000 in support for a PhD project on “The neurophysiology of sleep: awake animal MRI of the glymphatic system” from the AUFF NOVA program. The PhD project is being carried out by Thomas Beck Lindhardt, who completed his master's at University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) earlier this year and will spend nine months in the Liang Neuroimaging Lab at UCAS during his PhD. The project has also received support from the Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research (SDC).

09.12.2019 | Henriette Blæsild Vuust

Why do we sleep? Seemingly simple, this question remains a mystery. Nevertheless, sleep is vital. Animals die after mere days of complete sleep deprivation. In humans, the role of sleep has mostly been described as central to mental well-being, and as key to memory consolidation. This view however is now strongly challenged, as new findings show that sustained, partial sleep deprivation due to sleep disorders or lifestyle is linked to serious diseases e.g. diabetes, cardiac disease, cognitive impairment and dementia.

The physiological function of sleep remains unclear but can be investigated with 2-photon microscopy (2PM) and sensitive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods. An intriguing theory stems from 2PM-based observation of higher mobility of extracellular dye in brains of sleeping mice compared to awake state. This increased passive transport rate is thought to be due to a sleep-induced enlargement of brain extra-cellular space i.e. cell shrinkage. The mechanism provides the brain with a sleep-activated waste clearance pathway known as the glymphatic system.

MRI studies of the glymphatic system is the main theme of the PhD project which is a collaboration between Dr Brian Hansen's preclinical MRI lab at AU/CFIN, and Dr Zhifeng Liang's Neuroimaging Lab at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS). The PhD project will study how sleep influences and coexists with other aspects of the brain's fine-tuned physiology and provide non-invasive tools for studying the glymphatic system.

PhD student
Thomas Beck Lindhardt

The PhD project is supported by:

• The Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research (SDC)
• AUFF NOVA

For more information, please contact:

• Associate professor, Brian Hansen
  brian@cfin.au.dk