Sleep apnea is clinically diagnosed with a clinic test called a polysomnogram or a home test called oximetry. Five or more episodes of sleep apnea per hour is considered significant by doctors.

Daytime symptoms include fatigue and sleepiness, while common nighttime symptoms include snoring and restless sleep.

University of California neurobiologist Ronald Harper, of the David Geffen School of Medicine (Los Angeles), headed the study on sleep apnea and memory loss.

Harper and collaborators took high-resolution images of forty-three sleep-apnea patients, through the process of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The researchers were especially interested in the part of the brain called mammillary bodies, sometimes also called mamillary bodies. They are a pair of small round bodies on the undersurface of the brain.

Categorized as part of the hypthalamus, mammillary bodies are located at the ends of the anterior arches of the fornix. They are involved with the processing of memory, especially the part of memory that includes recognition.

The images of the sleep-apnea patients were compared to the brains of sixty-six subjects who did not suffer from sleep apnea. They were used as controls in the study, carefully selected in parallel to the ages and genders of the primary subjects.

What was concluded by Harper and his associates? Please read on.