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While 25% of Canadians experience symptoms of insomnia, approximately 10% have problems with chronic insomnia.
Better understanding of the brain mechanisms and the intermediate states between wakefulness and sleep could allow us to better understand their disruption and explain sleep disorders such as insomnia and sleepwalking.
Currently, to distinguish wakefulness and different stages of sleep, researchers use simple and imprecise physiological indicators, such as brain waves made visible thanks to electroencephalographies.
Neuroscientist Delphine Oudiette of the Brain Institute, one of the main authors of the work, explains that these indicators do not allow us to grasp in detail what is happening in the heads of sleepers, since they are sometimes in contradiction with their testimony.
We need finer physiological measurements that are aligned with the sleeper's feelings; this in order to better define one's level of vigilance.
A quote from Delphine Oudiette, Brain Institute
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This work also established that it is possible to anticipate the moments when sleepers are more inclined to respond to stimuli. Indeed, the pooling of different data (physiological, behavioral and participants' responses to a questionnaire) made it possible to establish that the opening of these connection windows is preceded by an acceleration of brain activity, and by certain physiological indicators associated with intense cognitive activity.
For Nadia Gosselin, the authors of the work would have benefited from questioning the participants about the quality of their sleep.< /p>
We didn't ask them if they slept well. Most people, when answering questions, don't feel like they're asleep. But in this study, we do not know if they had restful sleep.
A quote from Nadia Gosselin, CEAMS
Is this that we can really process information and have restful sleep? We cannot say it with this work, she summarizes.
An observation that the authors of the study will want to raise in future work, since they will try to determine if the multiplication of connection windows is linked to the quality of the sleep, and if they can be used to treat sleep disorders.
More advanced neuroimaging techniques, such as magnetoencephalography and intracranial recording of brain activity, will help us better understand the brain mechanisms that orchestrate sleeper behaviors.
A quote from Delphine Oudiette, Institut du brain
For Nadia Gosselin, this work will certainly stimulate research in a field which, in addition to being linked to many sleep disorders, is associated with several heart and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's.
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