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Narcoleptic Patients Show Fragmented EEG-Microstructure During Early NREM Sleep

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Abstract

Narcolepsy is a chronic disorder of the sleep-wake cycle with pathological shifts between sleep stages. These abrupt shifts are induced by a sleep-regulating flip-flop mechanism which is destabilized in narcolepsy without obvious alterations in EEG oscillations. Here, we focus on the question whether the pathology of narcolepsy is reflected in EEG microstate patterns. 30 channel awake and NREM sleep EEGs of 12 narcoleptic patients and 32 healthy subjects were analyzed. Fitting back the dominant amplitude topography maps into the EEG led to a temporal sequence of maps. Mean microstate duration, ratio total time (RTT), global explained variance (GEV) and transition probability of each map were compared between both groups. Nine patients reached N1, 5 N2 and only 4 N3. All healthy subjects reached at least N2, 19 also N3. Four dominant maps could be found during wakefulness and all NREM- sleep stages in healthy subjects. During N3, narcolepsy patients showed an additional fifth map. The mean microstate duration was significantly shorter in narcoleptic patients than controls, most prominent in deep sleep. Single maps’ GEV and RTT were also altered in narcolepsy. Being aware of the limitation of our low sample size, narcolepsy patients showed wake-like features during sleep as reflected in shorter microstate durations. These microstructural EEG alterations might reflect the intrusion of brain states characteristic of wakefulness into sleep and an instability of the sleep-regulating flip-flop mechanism resulting not only in pathological switches between REM- and NREM-sleep but also within NREM sleep itself, which may lead to a microstructural fragmentation of the EEG.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Grant 01 EV 0703) and the LOEWE Neuronale Koordination Forschungsschwerpunkt Frankfurt (NeFF). We thank Brooks Ferebee (Institute of Mathematics, Goethe University Frankfurt) for statistical support and are indebted to all our study participants. We especially thank Professor Geert Mayer for referring patients to our study.

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Written informed consent was obtained by all subjects/patients and the study was approved by the local ethics committee.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology and Brain Imaging Center, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Alena Kuhn, Verena Brodbeck, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Astrid Morzelewski, Frederic von Wegner & Helmut Laufs

  2. Department of Neurology, University Hospital Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Helmut Laufs

  3. Universitätsklinikum Frankfurt, Klinik für Neurologie, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60590, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Alena Kuhn

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  1. Alena Kuhn
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  2. Verena Brodbeck
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  3. Enzo Tagliazucchi
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  4. Astrid Morzelewski
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  5. Frederic von Wegner
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  6. Helmut Laufs
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Correspondence to Alena Kuhn.

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Kuhn, A., Brodbeck, V., Tagliazucchi, E. et al. Narcoleptic Patients Show Fragmented EEG-Microstructure During Early NREM Sleep. Brain Topogr 28, 619–635 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-014-0387-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-014-0387-1

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