Effect of Stress on Sleep and Its Relationship to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Abstract

Stress-induced alterations in sleep have been linked to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and sleep complaints and disturbances in arousal are continuing symptoms in patients. PTSD-related changes in sleep have not been fully characterized but appear to involve persistent disturbances in both rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM (NREM). Intense conditioned fear training, which may model PTSD in rodents, can produce reductions in REM without recovery as well as significant alterations in NREM that may vary with mouse and rat strains. These variants of conditioned fear paradigms and strain differences have not been fully exploited, but they appear to hold promise for modeling responses to stress that may provide insight into the role sleep plays in the neurobiology of PTSD. The amygdala and corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) play significant roles in regulating the stress response and have been implicated in PTSD. Recent work suggests that the amygdala and CRH may also play roles in regulating stress-induced changes in arousal and sleep. This chapter reviews the effects of stress on sleep with a specific emphasis on factors that may be important in modeling PTSD.