Phone Screening
First, you will answer several questions and complete a brief test to determine if you are eligible.
Consent
The process of ‘consent’ is where you are informed about the study details and all the risks and benefits are explained to you.
Questionnaires
If you are eligible and consent, the first part involves completing questionnaires online, on paper or over the phone.
Sleep Assessment
You will also wear two devices to measure your sleep while you are at home.
Health Measures
You will visit the Northwestern Preventive Medicine Clinic to take health measures, including body weight, blood pressure and a blood sample.
Brain Function Tests
You will visit a neurology clinic to complete different tests aimed at assessing your brain function and health.
After we recruit a participant, the study begins with these steps:
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A 15-minute telephone interview
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Surveys completed at home (which take about an hour)
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7 days of in-home sleep monitoring using portable monitoring devices that measure the quality and length of your sleep
Next, there are two examinations (about 2 hours for each visit) where the study staff will do the following:
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Draw blood
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Measure blood pressure
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Assess cognition and blood flow in the brain
We return information to the participant about their sleep and health measures that can be shared with primary care doctor. There is no cost for any of these tests, and we compensate the participant for sharing their valuable time with us. We also give participant money for transportation, provide transportation, or give you a parking voucher. Finally, we ask the participant to repeat these measures in about 2 years if able to do so.
We want to collect demographic characteristics, social factors and life stress, because of their potential to impact on brain health and sleep patterns. Sleep disorders also become more common as we get older.
The devices participants wear at home, one of which is called the Sleep Profiler, assess habitual sleep duration, sleep quality, sleep stages, and sleep-disordered breathing.
One of the sleep disorders we are concerned about is called sleep apnea, which is when breathing stops or slows frequently while sleeping. It can be a strain on the heart because of the frequent breathing pauses.
We take measurements of brain function to go along with the participant questionnaires and sleep data to get a better picture of brain health. We report our findings to sleep journals and to the Chicago community.
