The links between sleep and Alzheimer’s disease

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Graham Diering and Dr Shenée Martin, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US, who are taking a close look at the biomolecular and neurological changes that happen when our sleep is disrupted, and whether this could be a trigger for the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
• This resource also contains an interview with Shenée. If you or your students have a question for her or Graham, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. The team will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Graham and Shenée’s research, and tasks them to design an experiment.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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