Sleep and cognitive health
Lauren Whitehurst’s research program aims to define what constitutes “good” sleep and how it can be leveraged to support healthy cognition and mitigate cognitive disease and decline. Her work focuses on both central indicators of sleep, such as electroencephalographic measures, and autonomic indicators, including electrocardiographic signals, examining how these systems contribute to cognitive function. She also investigates how sleep disruptions—whether pharmacological or environmental—affect cognitive processing.