Géraldine Rauchs

French Institute of Health and Medical Research | Inserm · Unit of Cognitive Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroanatomy of Human Memory

Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) results in sleep disturbances that may have deleterious impacts on cognition, especially on memory. However, little is known about the sleep architecture in patients with Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS). This study aims at characterizing sleep disturbances in KS compared to AUD without KS and at specifying the relationships wit...

Objective: Rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep is markedly altered in Alzheimer's disease (AD), and its reduction in older populations is associated with AD risk. However, little is known about the underlying brain mechanisms. Our objective was to investigate the relationships between REM sleep integrity and amyloid deposition, grey matter volume and p...

Basic emotional functions seem well preserved in older adults. However, their reactivity to and recovery from socially negative events remain poorly characterized. To address this, we designed a ‘task–rest’ paradigm in which 182 participants from two independent experiments underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while exposed to socio-emot...

Sleep plays a crucial role in memory consolidation. Recent data in rodents and young adults revealed that fast spindle band power fluctuates at a 0.02-Hz infraslow scale during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. These fluctuations result from a periodic temporal clustering of spindles and may modulate sleep maintenance and memory consolidation. W...

Background Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is an important clinical outcome in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and is considered as a relevant indicator of treatment success. While a better understanding of the factors affecting HRQoL would enable to adjust patients’ care to favour treatment outcome, the determinants of HRQoL in AUD remain unclea...

Subclinical depressive symptoms are associated with increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but the brain mechanisms underlying this relationship are still unclear. We aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the brain substrates of subclinical depressive symptoms in cognitively unimpaired older adults using complementary multimodal neuroim...

Importance: No lifestyle-based randomized clinical trial directly targets psychoaffective risk factors of dementia. Meditation practices recently emerged as a promising mental training exercise to foster brain health and reduce dementia risk. Objective: To investigate the effects of meditation training on brain integrity in older adults. Design...

Time-based prospective memory (TBPM) is defined as the ability to remember to perform intended actions at a specific time in the future. TBPM is impaired in aging, and this decline has been associated with white-matter alterations within the superior fronto-occipital fasciculus. In the present study, we used resting-state functional magnetic resona...

Background Previous studies have revealed both sleep alterations and prospective memory (PM) impairments in breast cancer (BC) patients. PM refers to memory of intended actions and is crucial for daily living tasks and treatment compliance. As sleep is known to favor memory consolidation, one may expect that changes in sleep quality related to BC w...

Increasingly studied in a systematic manner since the 1970s, the cognitive processes of the brain taking place during sleeping periods remain an important object of scrutiny in the scientific community. In particular, sleep has been demonstrated to play a significant role for learning and memory consolidation processes, and sleep scientists have st...

Objectives Deepening our understanding of the mechanisms by which meditation practices impact well-being and human flourishing is essential for advancing the science of meditation. A recent phenomenologically grounded classification system distinguishes attentional, constructive, and deconstructive forms of meditation based on the psychological mec...

Background. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is an important clinical outcome in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and is considered as a relevant indicator of treatment success. While a better understanding of the factors affecting HRQoL would enable to adjust patients’ care to favour treatment outcome, the determinants of HRQoL in AUD remain uncle...

Sleep‐disordered breathing (SDB) has been associated to greater amyloid deposition and dementia risk. However, the pattern of SDB‐associated structural brain changes is unclear, especially within the medial temporal lobe (MTL). We investigated the associations between SDB severity and the volume of MTL subregions, and hypothesized that SDB would be...

Background: The Lifetime of Experiences Questionnaire (LEQ) assesses complex mental activity across the life-course and has been associated with brain and cognitive health. The different education systems and occupation classifications across countries represent a challenge for international comparisons. The objectives of this study were four-fold:...

Résumé Les patientes atteintes d’un cancer du sein se plaignent fréquemment d’une altération de leur sommeil. Ce dernier joue un rôle crucial dans le fonctionnement cognitif, notamment dans les fonctions exécutives telles que la planification ou la flexibilité, ou encore dans la consolidation des souvenirs en mémoire à long terme. Ces fonctions cog...

Background As the population ages, maintaining mental health and well-being of older adults is a public health priority. Beyond objective measures of health, self-perceived quality of life (QoL) is a good indicator of successful aging. In older adults, it has been shown that QoL is related to structural brain changes. However, QoL is a multi-facete...

Cognitive and brain alterations are common in alcohol use disorder and vary importantly from one patient to another. Sleep disturbances are also very frequent in these patients and remain largely neglected even though they can persist after drinking cessation. Sleep disturbances may be the consequence of specific brain alterations, resulting in cog...

Ageing is characterized by a progressive decline of sleep quality. Sleep difficulties are increasingly recognized as a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and have been associated with cognitive decline. However, the brain substrates underlying this association remain unclear. In this review, our objective was to provide a comprehensive overv...

The Lifetime of Experiences questionnaire (LEQ, Valenzuela and Sachdev, 2007) is an instrument that comprehensively assesses mental activity (education/occupation and leisure activities) across the lifespan (13‐30, 30‐65, 65‐present). The LEQ has been associated with brain health outcomes and cognitive decline. Challenges for the use of this questi...

In alcohol use disorder, drinking cessation is frequently associated with an alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Early in abstinence (within the first two months after drinking cessation), when patients do not exhibit physical signs of alcohol withdrawal syndrome anymore (such as nausea, tremor or anxiety), studies report various brain, sleep and cognitiv...

Time-based prospective memory (TBPM) allows us to remember to perform intended actions at a specific time in the future. TBPM is sensitive to the effects of age, but the neural substrates of this decline are still poorly understood. The aim of the present study was thus to better characterize the brain substrates of the age-related decline in TBPM,...

Importance Increasing evidence suggests that sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) increases the risk of developing Alzheimer clinical syndrome. However, the brain mechanisms underlying the link between SDB and Alzheimer disease are still unclear. Objective To determine which brain changes are associated with the presence of SDB in older individuals wh...

Objectif L’objectif de cette étude était d’analyser les spindles, acteurs fondamentaux de la consolidation mnésique au cours du sommeil, et leurs liens avec la consolidation d’intentions en mémoire prospective (mémoire des actions à réaliser dans le futur, MP) chez des patientes traitées pour un cancer du sein. Méthodes Nous avons enregistré le so...

Objectif Évaluer la macrostructure du sommeil de patientes traitées pour un cancer du sein et son influence sur la consolidation en mémoire prospective (MP). Méthodes Dix-huit patientes traitées par hormonothérapie pour un cancer du sein et 21 volontaires sains de même âge et niveau d’études ont réalisé le protocole. Le sommeil était évalué à l’ai...

Objectif Les apnées du sommeil sont associées à un risque accru de développer une maladie d’Alzheimer (MA), mais les mécanismes cérébraux sous-jacents restent mal compris. Cette étude vise à préciser, chez le sujet âgé, les atteintes cérébrales (structurales, fonctionnelles et moléculaires) et cognitives associées aux apnées du sommeil. Méthodes C...

Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) results in multiple social and cognitive problems with a poor health related quality of life (HRQoL). The association between HRQoL and cognition is well-known in various diseases (stroke, dementia...). While HRQoL is crucial to maintain abstinence, it remains little studied in AUD. Depression and anxiety also afect HRQoL...

Prospective memory (PM) refers to our ability to perform actions at the appropriate moment, either when a predetermined event occurs (event-based, EB) or after a predetermined amount of time (time-based, TB). Sleep favors the consolidation of both EB and TB intentions, but whether this benefit is preserved during ageing is still subject to debate....

Background Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) patients without Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) report a variable self‐rated sleep quality. Their ability to accurately judge their sleep quality may be related to their alcohol‐related cognitive deficits and brain damage. KS patients, who present severe brain dysfunction, may be cognitively unable to judge their sl...

Introduction Sleep disturbances are increasingly recognized as a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. However, no study has assessed the relationships between objective sleep fragmentation (SF) and brain and cognitive integrity across different cognitive stages, from cognitively unimpaired elderly subjects to patients with subjective cognitive decl...

Introduction The Age-Well observational, cross-sectional study investigates the affective and cognitive mechanisms of meditation expertise with behavioral, neuroimaging, sleep, and biological measures sensitive to aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Methods Thirty cognitively unimpaired individuals aged 65 years or older with at least 10,000 hours...

Introduction The Age-Well clinical trial is an ongoing monocentric, randomized, controlled trial aiming to assess an 18-month preventive meditation-based intervention directly targeting the attentional and emotional dimensions of aging to promote mental health and well-being in elderly people. Methods One hundred thirty-seven cognitively unimpaire...

Introduction Subjectively experienced cognitive decline in older adults is an indicator of increased risk for dementia and is also associated with increased levels of anxiety symptoms. As anxiety is itself emerging as a risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia, the primary question of the present study is whether an 8-week mindfulness-based i...

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is the most frequent cancer in women with more than 70% of BC patients being treated with hormonal therapy (HT). Among these patients, some report difficulties in remembering what they are supposed to do at the right moment, referring to prospective memory (PM). PM is essential for autonomy and medical adherence of p...

Aging is accompanied by many physical, biological, psy-choaffective and cognitive changes. Cerebral aging is a complex and heterogeneous process. Magnetic resonance imaging can be used to identify and quantify, at least part of, these cerebral alterations in vivo. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measures the alterations of the integrity of white mat...

Objectif Plusieurs études suggèrent une altération de la consolidation des souvenirs au cours du sommeil chez le sujet âgé, mais ceci reste controversé. Cette étude vise à mieux comprendre les liens entre les performances mnésiques, les modifications cérébrales structurales et la qualité du sommeil au cours du vieillissement. Méthodes Seize sujets...

Objectif L’altération du sommeil lent profond (N3), crucial pour la consolidation mnésique, contribuerait au déclin cognitif et serait associée à une augmentation de la charge amyloïde. Cette étude vise à explorer les liens entre la durée de N3 et les biomarqueurs du vieillissement en imagerie multimodale. Méthodes Dix-huit volontaires (âge moyen...

Objectif Le trouble de l’usage d’alcool (TUAL) est associé à des atteintes cérébrales et cognitives hétérogènes, ainsi que des troubles du sommeil fréquents. Le sommeil contribue à l’intégrité des structures cérébrales et au bon fonctionnement cognitif. Nous cherchons donc à mieux comprendre l’impact des troubles du sommeil sur les anomalies struct...

Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to execute an intention at the appropriate moment in the future, which can be performed either at the appearance of an event (event-based, EBPM) or after a certain amount of time (time-based, TBPM). PM is generally impaired during aging but the cerebral substrates of this decline have been l...

Aging is associated with progressive cerebral volume and glucose metabolism decreases. Conditions such as stress and sleep difficulties exacerbate these changes and are risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. Meditation practice, aiming towards stress reduction and emotion regulation, can downregulate these adverse factors. In this pilot study, we ex...

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complex syndrome that may occur after exposure to one or more traumatic events. It associates physiological, emotional, and cognitive changes Brain and hormonal modifications contribute to some impairments in learning, memory, and emotion regulation. Some of these biological dysfunctions may be analyzed in...

Information that is processed with reference to the self (i.e., self-referential processing, SRP) is generally associated with better remembering than information processed in a semantic condition. This benefit of self on memory performance is called self-reference effect (SRE). In the present study, we assessed changes in the SRE and SRP-related b...

Our results indicate that the benefit of sleep on PM is partially preserved in aging, but becomes more vulnerable to incongruency between the cue and the content of the intention to be recalled. Our findings may thus explain potential difficulties that older adults may have in recalling unusual actions even after sleep.

Recent studies in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and in humans suggest that sleep disruption and amyloid-beta (Ab) accumulation are interrelated, and may, thus, exacerbate each other. We investigated the association between self-reported sleep variables and neuroimaging data in 51 healthy older adults. Participants completed a questionnai...

Le rêve fait l’objet d’une grande fascination pour la psychologie et les neurosciences depuis le XIXème siècle. Pourtant, en dépit d’avancées récentes, il reste encore profondément énigmatique. Décrit comme un état modifié de conscience survenant au cours du sommeil, caractérisé par des expériences sensorielles, cognitives et émotionnelles vives, i...

Introduction : Les études de neuropsychologie et de neuroimagerie ont permis de préciser les atteintes cognitives et cérébrales des patients alcoolo-dépendants récemment sevrés (AD). D’autres travaux ont souligné la présence très fréquente de troubles du sommeil chez les AD, pouvant être un facteur de risque de rechute (Brower et al., 2001). En pra...

Sleep favors memory consolidation. Studies conducted in recent years allowed to reveal the neurobiological underpinnings underlying the beneficial effect of sleep on memory. They also have led to the proposal of two theoretical models: the "hippocampo-neocortical dialogue" and the "synaptic downscaling hypothesis". Normal ageing and, even more mark...

Le sommeil est un moment privilégié favorisant la consolidation des souvenirs en mémoire à long terme. Les travaux menés au cours des dernières années ont permis de préciser les substrats neurobiologiques sous-tendant cet effet bénéfique du sommeil sur la mémoire et ont abouti à la proposition de deux modèles : l’hypothèse du dialogue hippocampo-né...

The self-reference effect (SRE) has been shown to benefit episodic memory in healthy individuals. In healthy aging, its preservation is acknowledged, but in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the jury is still out. Furthermore, there has yet to be a study of the SRE in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). As self-reference implies subjective self-repr...

Les troubles du sommeil et l'alcoolo-dependance (AD) sont deux comorbidites frequemment associees dans les pathologies psychiatriques, telles que l'anxiete, la depression, les troubles bipolaires ou la schizophrenie [1]. Depuis plusieurs annees, les etudes conduites dans l'AD ont permis de mieux preciser les atteintes cognitives et cerebrales de ce...

The self-reference effect (SRE) has been shown to benefit episodic memory in healthy individuals. In healthy aging, its preservation is acknowledged, but in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the jury is still out. Furthermore, there has yet to be a study of the SRE in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). As self-reference implies subjective self-repr...

Le sommeil est un état physiologique favorisant la consolidation des informations récemment acquises en une forme plus durable et éventuellement améliorée. Pour les souvenirs de nature épisodique, ce processus opèrerait principalement au cours des épisodes de sommeil lent profond par le biais de réactivations des traces mnésiques au sein des réseau...