Canada holds ‘world’s largest sleep study’

Brain scientists seek online volunteers

TORONTO Brain scientists at a Canadian university are aiming to get a better handle on how sleep affects memory, problem solving, and other cognitive functions in what they are billing as the largest such study yet.

The researchers at Western University, in London, Ont., are hoping to recruit upward of 100,000 participants from around the world for the online study.

“There’s a lot about sleep and sleep deprivation and its effects on the brain that we just don’t know,” said Bobby Stojanoski, one of the research scientists. “For instance, how much sleep is necessary? Is that true for everybody? Are there certain sub-populations who require more or less sleep?”

A suite of 12 online tests will be used to assess how changes in sleep patterns affect performance. Users register at worldslargestsleepstudy.com to take part. The idea is then, over a three-day period, to do the brain-function tests and fill in a questionnaire regarding sleep.

Volunteer participants will get a report on how they fared, and how they stacked up against others who’ve done the same testing.

“We all have a bad night of sleep every once in a while, and we drive our cars and we go to work, but are we doing this in a cognitively deprived state?” Stojanoski said. “We hope to answer these questions.”

The online tests are designed to assess different kinds of thinking. They involve challenges such as finding odd-one-out shapes, moving numbers into place and grammatical tests.

Some preliminary participants have already taken the tests and were given brain scans when fully rested and after a sleepless night, something not practical on a wider scale. The online study aims to extract equivalent information on a much larger scale.

The researchers, led by neuroscientist Adrian Owen, hope recruiting huge numbers of participants of various ages and backgrounds will lend a statistical reliability to the data.

They hope to begin reporting out by year’s end.