This dissertation deals with the chronobiology of sleep and sleepiness in narcolepsy-cataplexy. The text consists of a series of papers: three research papers, and a theoretical paper, with a technical paper appended. The first research paper presents an ambulatory EEG study in which subjects were free to go about their routine home activities, wearing the portable recorder for 24 hours. The timing and duration of sleep episodes were calculated relative to nocturnal midsleep time. Results demonstrated that the most frequent timing of naps was about 1-1.5 h in advance of that found for normal healthy subjects who show greatest sleep propensity 180 degrees out of phase with nocturnal midsleep time. The second paper is a theoretical review of circasemidean sleep-wake propensity and proposes a new modelling approach. The third and fourth papers represent companion papers from a 3-condition within-subjects experiment on the effects of scheduled naps on performance. Sleep schedules were based on habitual total sleep time amounts and experimental sleep schedules devised for each subject. A no-nap condition scheduled 100% of total sleep time at night, and nap conditions scheduled 25% of total sleep time in either a single long nap or 5 equidistantly spaced short naps. The first of these papers measures the efficacy of naps in terms of their effects on performance over the whole day and by time-of-day category divisions. Results indicated that for reaction time, performance in the single long nap condition was significantly improved over a no-nap control condition, attributable to post-nap improvements in performance. However, logical reasoning test results were actually better in the no-nap condition, but this may indicate that a longer nocturnal sleep period may be necessary for optimal performance on this task. The timing of unscheduled sleep episodes was again seen to be in advance of the most frequent nap time for normal subjects. The second of these papers examines the related sleep inertia effects. Sleep inertia was found after the short naps as measured by the descending subtraction task, is evident following all but the first and is most prolonged following the third, short nap. Sleep inertia was also found for reaction time variables following short, but was absent following the long nap. Sleep inertia effects on reaction time were significantly greater on SWS arousals. A paper on the technical details of the sleep-wake scheduling and performance testing software is appended.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/10317 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Mullington, Janet. |
| Contributors | Broughton, Roger, |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 195 p. |
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