Insufficient sleep increases oxidative stress, leading to neuronal death in the hippocampus.

“with insufficient sleep you get increases in oxidative stress those oxidative stress processes lead to a whole cascade of kind of a finger flick domino effect of things that lead to neuronal death one of the areas in the brain that is most sensitive to that is an area that we call the hippocampus which is a critical memory center it's probably one of the first structures to undergo damage in Alzheimer's disease it's part of the reason why the sort of the phenotype of Alzheimer's is forgetfulness problems with memory”