Sleep Disorders

Question 1

Define Insomnia

Answer 1

Chronic inability to obtain the necessary amount/quality of sleep to maintain adequate daytime behaviour

Question 2

What are the types of insomnia?

Answer 2

• Chronic Primary where there’s generally no identifiable cause
• Temporary Secondary due to pain, grief or other crisis

Question 3

What are the differences between nightmares and night terrors?

Answer 3

• Nightmares occur during REM sleep
• Night Terrors occur in Deep Sleep
• Nightmares are remembered
• Night Terrors aren’t remembered
• Nightmares stop when you wake up
• Night Terrors involve thrashing, screaming, sit/standing and opening eyes

Question 4

At what stage of the sleep cycle does somnambulism (sleep walking) occur?

Answer 4

Mostly Stage 4, but can be other parts of Slow Wave Sleep

Question 5

At what age is somnambulism most common?

Answer 5

in children and young adults.

Probably because Deep Sleep declines with Age

Question 6

What is narcolepsy?

Answer 6

Sudden descent from awake state to REM sleep

Question 7

What causes Narcolepsy?

Answer 7

Dysfunctional Orexin release from excitatory neurons in the hypothalamus

Question 8

What is a circadian rhythm?

Answer 8

A circadian rhythm is a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and repeats on each rotation of the Earth roughly every 24 hours

Question 9

Where is the ‘master clock’ for sleep?

Answer 9

In the Suprachiasmic Nuclei of the Hypothalamus

The neurons here contain an inherent 24 hour cycle

Question 10

What trains the 24 hour cycle of the SCN neurons?

Answer 10

External cues such as light and dark (maybe because optic nerve fibres feed into the SCN at the chiasm)

Question 11

What happens if the SCN is destroyed?

Answer 11

You lose the circadian rhythm of sleep