Quantifizierte Arousal-Analyse bei Patienten mit einer psychophysiologischen Insomnie

Summary Arousals are transient, brief and abrupt frequency shifts in the electroencephalogram during sleep. A lot of studies considered that the impaired daytime functioning in patients with sleep disturbances may be caused by such sleep fragmentations. In 1992 the American Sleep Disorders Association (ASDA) defined criteria concerning the rating of arousals. Nevertheless, data on arousal patterns according to ASDA criteria in patients with insomnia are still missing. Therefore, we studied the arousal distribution according to ASDA criteria in 25 patients with psychophysiological insomnia divided into four age groups and 10 young healthy controls. Young patients showed a significantly increased arousal index per hour total sleep time (18.3±6.3) compared to age-matched controls (10.5±3.1, p≤0.01). Within the patient groups the arousal index increased with increasing age (maximal index: 27,6±11.5). All patients showed high percentages of non-movement related arousals. In spite of the explorative character of the presented study, the results indicate that the insomniacs' sleep is disturbed by arousal-related sleep fragmentation. The increased arousal frequency suggests to be a neurophysiological correlate of the postulated hyperarousal in psychophysiological insomnia.