ID 290 – Differences in sleep microstate curves among healthy sleepers and patients after stroke

Abstract

Objective Sleep deprivation, whether from disorder or lifestyle, poses a significant risk in daytime performance. Ischemic stroke resulting in cerebral lesions is a well-known acute disorder that leaves affected patients strongly vulnerable to sleep disturbances that often lead to the above-mentioned impairments. The aim of this study is to identify objective sleep patterns being potential sources of disturbed sleep in stroke patients. Methods To overcome the well-known limits of the standardized sleep scoring into several discrete sleep stages we employed an EEG data-based probabilistic model of sleep with an arbitrary number of different sleep stages – sleep microstates – and a high time resolution. The probabilistic sleep model (PSM) characterizes sleep by posterior probabilities curves. On a wide collection of sleep recordings from healthy subjects and stroke patients we applied functional data clustering methods to sleep microstate curves of the PSM. Results We found differences between stroke patients and healthy subjects in sleep microstates associated with slow wave sleep. Considering weighted combinations of microstates a better separation of the two groups was obtained. We observed a connection between sleep structure and sleep quality questionnaires as well as a set of tests reflecting subjects’ daytime cognitive performance.