BACKGROUND The beneficial effect of antidepressant interventions has been proposed to depend on suppression of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep or inhibition of electroencephalographic (EEG) slow-wave activity (SWA) in non-REM sleep. Use of the monoamine oxidase inhibitor phenelzine sulfate can eliminate REM sleep. We studied the relation between REM sleep suppression and antidepressant response ...

Ghrelin, an endogenous ligand of the growth hormone (GH) secretagogue (GHS) receptor, stimulates GH release, appetite, and weight gain in humans and rodents. Synthetic GHSs modulate sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) and nocturnal hormone secretion. We studied the effect of 4 x 50 microg of ghrelin administered hourly as intravenous boluses between 2200 and 0100 on sleep EEG and the secretion of ...

Administration of steroid hormones was demonstrated to modulate the sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) and sleep-associated hormonal secretion in specific ways. The present study was conducted to compare the effects of mifepristone (Mif), a mixed glucocorticoid (GR) and progesterone receptor (PR) antagonist, and megestrol acetate (Meg), a PR agonist. Nine healthy men were pretreated with either p...

To better understand the neurobiology of sleep disorders, detailed understanding of circadian and homeostatic sleep-wake regulation in healthy volunteers is mandatory. Sleep physiology and the repercussions of experimentally-induced sleep deprivation on sleep and waking electroencephalogram (EEG), vigilance and subjective state are highly variable, even in healthy individuals. Accumulating evid...

Automated analysis of the electroencephalographic (EEG) data for the brain monitoring of preterm infants has gained attention in the last decades. In this study, we analyze the complexity of neonatal EEG, quantified using multiscale entropy. The aim of the current work is to investigate how EEG complexity evolves during electrocortical maturation and whether complexity features can be used to c...

OBJECTIVE To determine if chronic insomnia alters the relationship between heart rate variability and delta sleep determined at the EEG. METHODS After one night of accommodation, polysomnography was performed in 14 male patients with chronic primary insomnia matched with 14 healthy men. ECG and EEG recordings allowed the determination of High Frequency (HF) power of RR-interval and delta slee...

The development of EEC sleep-spindles in prematurely-born and full-term infants was studied to test an hypothesized impact of experience (longer extrauterine existence) upon innate maturational factors (EEG development). The age of otiset of sleep spindles and achievement of mature spindle quality occurs approximately 4 weeks earlier in prematurely-born infants than in full-term infants. Sleep ...

Specific developmental and aging trajectories characterize sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) of typically developing (TD) subjects. Williams syndrome (WS) is marked by sleep alterations and accelerated aging of several anatomo-functional and cognitive measures. Here we test the hypothesis of a premature aging of sleep in WS. Age-related changes of home recorded sleep EEG of 42 subjects (21 WS, 2...

www.frontiersin.org encountered in the vegetative state makes it utterly difficult to identify possible REM sleep other than by the presence of muscular atonia and eye movements – note that nocturnal penile erections have been convincingly shown in vegetative patients (Cologan et al., in press). The brain’s metabolic activity in a coma, as measured by fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomogr...

BACKGROUND The alpha-EEG anomaly during sleep, originally associated with chronic pain, is noted in several psychiatric and medical conditions and is also present in some normal subjects. The exact significance of the alpha-EEG anomaly is uncertain, but it has been suggested to be a nonspecific response to a variety of noxious stimuli. We propose that attachment insecurity, which is often assoc...