Selective enhancement of rapid eye movement sleep by deep brain stimulation of the human pons.
Animal studies suggest that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is governed by the interaction of REM-promoting and REM-inhibiting nuclei in the pontomesencephalic tegmentum. The pedunculopontine nucleus is proposed to be REM promoting. Using polysomnography, we studied sleep in five parkinsonian patients undergoing unilateral pedunculopontine nucleus deep brain stimulation (DBS). We demonstrated a near doubling of nocturnal REM sleep between the DBS "off" and DBS "on" states, without significant changes in other sleep states. This represents the first demonstration that DBS can selectively modulate human sleep, and it supports an important role for the pedunculopontine nucleus region in modulating human REM sleep. Ann Neurol 2009;66:110-114.
Lim
Andrew S
AS
Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Moro
Elena
E
Lozano
Andres M
AM
Hamani
Clement
C
Dostrovsky
Jonathan O
JO
Hutchison
William D
WD
Lang
Anthony E
AE
Wennberg
Richard A
RA
Murray
Brian J
BJ
D000368:Aged; D046690:Deep Brain Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000150:complications / Q000628:therapy; D017286:Polysomnography / Q000379:methods; D011149:Pons / Q000502:physiology*; D020187:REM Sleep Behavior Disorder / Q000209:etiology / Q000628:therapy*; D013494:Supranuclear Palsy, Progressive / Q000150:complications / Q000628:therapy