Sleep Flashcards
(93 cards)
Components of sleep
- Behavioural state
- Marked by quiescence and low attention
- Recurrent and reversible
- Dreams and mentation
- Amnesia
- Expressions vary
Why sleep?
- Brain and body restoration
- Energy conservation
- Memory and learning
- Emotional regulation
- Housekeeping/ clearance
- Xie et al. (2013): metabolite clearance
- Yang et al. (2014): formation of dendrite spines
Structure of sleep
- Awake
- NREM (75%)
- Stage N1 light sleep (5%)
- Stage N2 (50%)
- Stage N3 deep sleep/ slow-wave sleep (20%) - REM paradoxical sleep (25%)
Characteristics of sleep cycles
- Alternate in a cyclical fashion
- Cycles gradually get longer (~70-100min to ~90-120min)
- Deep sleep reduces in later cycles
- Stage 2 and REM become longer across the night
Physiological changes during sleep
- Motor response
- Heart rate and blood pressure
- Blood flow to brain
- Respiration
- Body temperature
Neural basis of sleep/wake regulation
Superchiasmatic nucleus (SCN)
- Hypothalamus
- Controls circadian cycles
Ascending arousal system
- To stay awake
- Hypothalamus sends signals to stimulate cerebral cortex to maintain consciousness
- With the help of orexin neurons/hypocretin
Ventrolateral pre optic area (VLPO)
Releases NTs to switch from wakefulness to NREM by inhibiting activity in arousal centers
Two process model
- Process S: homeostatic process (tracking need for sleep by prior sleep and duration of waking)
- Process C: circadian process (tracking environmental time: light-dark)
- Interplay of these processes determines timing, duration and structure of sleep
Light in circadian rhythm
- Circadian pacemaker/ zeitgeber
- Synchronisation of retina and optic nerve
- Might have desynchrony in people born blind, shift workers, travellers, old people
Behavioral changes in sleep
- Reduced attention and response to visual stimuli
- May wake up from auditory stimuli
- May wake up from olfactory stimuli in stage 1
- Loss of muscle tone
- Memory impairment
Polysomnography (PSG)
- Electroencephalography (EEG): brain neurons
- Electroculography (EOG): voltage changes induced by eye rotation
- Electromyography (EMG): muscle activity from chin
Pros:
• Gold standards
• Precise rich information
Cons:
• Expensive, labour-intensive, training
• Short duration, lab based
• Intrusive (could interfere with sleep- i.e. first night effect, reversed effect for insomnia)
Actigraphy
Indirect measure (estimates sleep): algorithm used affects accuracy
Pros: • Affordable • User friendly • Ecological manner • Suitable for long observations • Good validation with PSG for time slept but not onset
Cons: • Indirect measure • Doesn’t detect moment of onset • Less information than PSG • Varying data depending on device, algorithm etc. (also need to use sleep diary)
Sleep quality questionnaire
Types: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index; Insomnia Severity Index; Jenkins Sleep Questionnaire
Pros:
• Convenient
• Cost-effective
• Benchmarked against diagnostic criteria
Cons: • Subjective • Retrospective • Recall bias • Further assessment required
Sleep diary
Sleep parameters: sleep onset latency, time in bed, wake after sleep onset
Pros: • Intuitive • Stable picture with 1-2 weeks of use • Information can help to reconstruct sleep experience Cons: • Burden on sleeper; missing data • Training for data collection • Training to interpret • Subjective and retrospective; recall bias
Apps and wearable tech
- Similar to actigraphy
- Algorithm and validation unclear
- Settling of sensitivity unclear
- Interaction errors (i.e. forget to wear)
- Interpretation hard (sleep stages not possible)
Sleep perception
- Sometimes objective sleep for insomniacs and normal sleepers overlaps but discrepancies are due to sleep perception
- Insomniacs have a high tendency to underestimate their actual sleep (overestimate sleep onset latency and underestimate total sleep time)
Hypotheses for sleep misperception
- Challenge of context
- Interpreting sleep as wake
- Worry/ selective attention
- Physiological arousal
- Transient awakenings
Clock monitoring (Tang et al., 2007)
- Clock monitoring lead to more reports of pre-sleep worry and longer sleep onset latency
- Found this even when they controlled by monitoring a digital display that wasn’t time
Driving drowsy
- 20% of all traffic accidents are sleep related
* 37% reported they have fallen asleep while driving
Cost of bad sleep
- Total: $6.6 billion (Canadian $) direct and indirect
* A&E: $31 billion: 7.2% of all accidents
Define epidemiology
Quantitative study of frequency, distribution, determinants and control of health problems and disease
• Cross sectional: snapshot
• Case-control: retrospective
• Longitudinal cohort: prospective
Basic concepts in epidemiology
- Exposure and outcome
- Prevalence, incidence, persistence, remission\morbidity and mortality rate
- Risk and odds ratio
- Cofounder and adjusted odds ratio
Pros and cons of epidemiology
- Representative
- Sufficient power
- Longer time frame
- Temporal order
- Expensive
- Few items for assessment
- Harder to use objective measures