Disordered sleep characterized by disordered frontiers of sleep stages and wakefulness, with disorder motor control

Abstract

Although the process of sleep is probably as old as the whole living world and although it occupies one third of our lives, and although it is a vital form of behavior whose purpose we do not fully understand - still, the first steps enabling us to enter some of the secrets of the process of sleep were made only in the past century. The first human electroencephalogram (EEG) was performed by the German neurologist Hans Berger in 1908. in Jenna. He published his discovery some twenty years later, in 1929. Formally the first school-textbook on sleep, with the title 'Sleep and Wakefulness', was published in Chicago (USA) in 1939. by professor Nathaniel Kleitmann. The dual nature of sleep was described by Eugen Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitmann in 1953. In Serbia, the first textbook on sleep with the title ; Wakefulness, sleep and dreaming' was written by the Academician professor Veselinka Susic in 1977. The last decades of the 20th century 'shook' the world of sleep with new discoveries. Several diseases were described (i.e., Sleep related eating disorder as NREM sleep, and REM sleep behavior disorder as REM sleep parasomnia) whose pathophysiology was comprehended. A CPAP apparatus was produced and perfected for the treatment of sleep apnea. The last decades of the past century with the discoveries of neurotransmitters hypocretin/orexin brought about the knowledge on the nature of narcolepsy whose therapy was significantly improved. The pathophysiology of NREM parasomnias (sleep walking or somnambulism and sleep terrors, confusional awakenings and nightmares, sleep related eating or sex) as well as some of the REM parasomnias (REM sleep behavior disorder) were explained in a novel manner. These fundamental discoveries threw new views on the nature of the process of sleep. They enabled us to better perceive the nature of the sleep process its physiology and pathology, and to better comprehend the processes called 'the dissociation of sleep stages'.