| Abstract: | Electropolygraphic investigations revealed a tendency in patients with sleep disturbances associated with various forms of neuroses for the total duration of sleep to increase under the influence of derivatives of  -aminobutyric acid (GABA), on account of an increase in the principal stages of sleep (second stage,  sleep, and fast sleep) and a statistically significant decrease in the number of spontaneous awakenings, in the total duration of wakefulness at night, and in the activation index of movements. Analysis of some of the electrographic indices within the stages of sleep revealed a tendency for the number of sleep spindles to increase in the second stage, an increase in the index in the third and fourth stages of sleep, and an increase in the mean numerical indices of rapid eye movements in the absence of significant changes in their specific occurrence per unit time. GABA derivatives in the doses used cause on the whole similar changes in the structure of sleep in its various disturbances, with sodium hydroxybutyrate having a relatively stronger action.Department of Pathology of the Autonomic Nervous System, I. M. Sechenov First Moscow Medical Institute. (Presented by Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR V. V. Zakusov.) Translated from Byulleten' Éksperimental'noi Biologii i Meditsiny, Vol. 85, No. 2, pp. 174–177, February, 1978. |
