Form Of Parasomnia Research Articles

REM-sleep behavior disorder and sleepwalking in a patient with Parkinson's disease and essential tremor

REM-sleep behavior disorder (RBD), a form of parasomnia, is characterized by motor and/or speech activity during sleep corresponding to the dream content. RBD is currently considered as a marker of onset of neurodegenerative diseases (sinucleinopathies) and as a most specific early symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD). The authors describe a clinical case of a patient with the combination of essential tremor, initial signs of PD and RBD. A polysomnographic study has confirmed clinical signs of RBD and determined the disturbances of sleep architecture: the increase in falling asleep, number of awakenings, wakefulness during sleep, the absence of deep slow-wave sleep. The particular features of the patient were essential tremor and sleep walking.

Adult Night Terrors Since Childhood: A Case Report

Confusion exists among medical professionals in differentiating a night terror episode (NTE) from a nightmare and other sleep disorders in adults. NTEs that persist into adulthood are considered rare in the literature. Devastating injuries occur during NTEs reveal the need for further examination of the physical, mental, and emotional impacts on the patient in order to create lasting curative treatment options. Often, adults who are experiencing NTE do not seek medical help until they hurt themselves, someone else, or until they can no longer cope with the overall effects of disrupted sleep. Much of the literature regarding NTEs is focused on children who, while having a higher prevalence of NTEs, ultimately outgrow the problem without medical intervention. A female with over 40 years of NTE history is studied and the resulting impact on her life is explored. Precipitating factors such as stress and aberrant noise are identified. Various forms of treatment using medications and relaxation techniques are assessed. Misdiagnosis and misunderstanding by medical personnel is also noted in her case. A concise understanding of NTEs throughout all medical specialties is necessary in order to differentiate between the various forms of parasomnias and sleep disorders and to offer appropriate treatment options. Primary care physicians sleep disorder specialists, pain management specialists, orthopaedic and neurology specialists, and psychiatrists could easily encounter such a patient. The importance of recognizing and immediately treating NTEs in adults is vital to the safety and psychology of the possible patients and others affected.

Sound analysis of catathrenia: a vocal expiratory sound

Catathrenia (nocturnal groaning) is a rare and relatively little-understood parasomnia. The characteristics of the sound and the recordings are not similar in all the relevant research papers. Indeed, there is currently some discussion regarding whether or not this is a single entity. For some authors, catathrenia is a particular form of parasomnia; for others, it may be a variant of snoring or a respiratory problem. The goal is to establish whether or not catathrenia may be regarded as an expiratory vocal sound. An attempt was made to classify the origin of this sound according to its sound structure. We present the sound analysis of two patients, a man and a woman, with clinically diagnosed catathrenia and we compared them with the analysis of snoring. We use the spectrogram and the oscillogram. We classified the sounds according to the Yanagihara criteria. The vocal nature of the sound was confirmed, and several significant differences to some snoring sounds were discovered. The analysis of the catathrenia samples demonstrated that these signals are type II according to Yanagihara classification; these signals had a very short jitter, and had formants and harmonics. However, snoring is a type III, very irregular and had formants but not harmonics. The oscillogram and the spectrogram in these patients show that the origins of the sounds are clearly different: catathrenia is laryngeal, while snoring is guttural. Catathrenia cannot be considered as expiratory snoring.