Four members of a family with spinocerebellar degeneration and slow saccadic eye movements are described. Detailed electrophysiological studies revealed abnormalities of neurological pathways not apparent clinically. The patients had slow saccades as measured electrophysiologically, as well as absence of rapid eye movements (REM) despite REM stages of sleep. These studies suggest that although ...

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is normally accompanied by a complete suppression of tone in the antigravity musculature. Pontine lesions have been shown to block this suppression, producing a syndrome of REM sleep without atonia. We now report that glutamate-induced lesions of the medial medulla, including the nucleus magnocellularis, caudal nucleus gigantocellularis and rostral nucleus paramed...

The median preoptic nucleus (MnPN) and the ventral lateral preoptic area (vlPOA) of the hypothalamus express sleep-related Fos immunoreactivity, and a subset of Fos-immunoreactive neurons (IRNs) in these nuclei contain glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD), a marker of GABAergic cells. We recently showed that the numbers of Fos-positive (Fos+) and Fos+ GAD-IRNs in both the MnPN and the vlPOA are po...

Converging evidence from animal and human studies suggest that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep modulates emotional processing. The aim of the present study was to explore the effects of selective REM sleep deprivation (REM-D) on emotional responses to threatening visual stimuli and their brain correlates using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twenty healthy subjects were randomly as...

Polysomnograms of most homeothermic species distinguish two states, rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM (NREM) sleep. These alternate several times during the night for reasons and following rules that remain poorly understood. It is unknown whether each state has its own function and regulation or whether they represent two facets of the same process. The present study compared the mean REM/N...

One of the hallmarks of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is muscle atonia. Here we report extended epochs of muscle atonia in non-REM sleep (MAN). Their extent and time course was studied in a protocol that included a baseline night, a daytime sleep episode with or without selective REM sleep deprivation, and a recovery night. The distribution of the latency to the first occurrence of MAN was bim...

The effects of both REM sleep deprivation and its recovery on pontine and hippocampus muscarinic M2 receptors were investigated in synaptosomes using [3H]-AF-DX 384 as a ligand. Animals were divided into three groups: REM sleep deprivation group (small platforms 6.5 cm of diameter); stress group (large platforms 14 cm of diameter) and cage control group. In a second experiment REM sleep-deprive...

Sleep markedly affects fundamental mechanisms of motor control. Sleep not only suppresses postural muscle tone (Brooks and Peever, 2008b; Burgess et al., 2008), but it also attenuates, and in some cases even abolishes motor reflexes (e.g., H-reflex) (Wills and Chase, 1979). Mechanisms of motor control are also differentially affected by prevailing behavioral state. For example, muscle tone and ...

Sleep in depression is characterized by the occurrence of episodes of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep at sleep onset. The empirical foundations of three hypotheses about the origin of this phenomenon are examined: (I) A circadian rhythm hypothesis stating that sleep onset REM episodes (SOREMs) are the result of an abnormal phase-position of the REM sleep production cycle. (2) A REM sleep-slow wa...