Graduate student Elizabeth Tilden was awarded a prestigious fellowship at the National Institute on Aging, a part of the National Institute of Health (NIH), for her research investigating how aging and sleep affect cognitive ability. 

Tilden began her journey into medical research during her senior year at Brandeis University. She was always interested in neuroscience research and the brain’s plasticity. While completing her undergraduate degree, she did research related to sleep’s effect on brain development. 

She was specifically looking into how aging affects the plasticity and learning that certain intracellular signals promote during sleep. 

“When I was first diving into research, [neuroscience] was sort of the world that I just ended up in. One of the projects that I worked on as an undergrad was tangentially related to how sleep particularly can sort of facilitate these plasticity processes,” Tilden said. 

Tilden’s passion for the subject led her to research in professor Yao Chen’s lab, where she specialized in understanding brain chemicals and their effects on various processes, where they conducted research focusing on intracellular signals during sleep.

“My project is focusing on how signaling changes inside the cell while [someone is] sleeping, and how that might sort of facilitate this pro-learning effect that we have when we sleep,” she said. 

The F30 fellowship, awarded by the NIH, will provide critical funding to support Tilden’s ongoing research while contributing to her development as a physician-scientist. It will also enable her to apply her findings to improve the quality of life for individuals experiencing cognitive decline in the normal aging process.

“You’re not only selling your research to the NIH as something that’s worth funding, but you’re also sort of asking the NIH to help you with your development as, in this case, a physician-scientist,” Tilden said. 

Tilden’s work could have profound implications for human health. Sleep, a fundamental process, has far-reaching effects on various aspects of well-being, impacting almost every chronic disease, including brain disorders. 

Understanding the role of sleep in learning and memory, especially in the context of aging, could lead to targeted therapies for cognitive decline in the elderly and neurodegenerative diseases. 

“If we can figure out how sleep is gating this,” Tilden said,  “we can use that to create targeted therapies to help increase people’s quality of life as they age.”