Sleep disorders

Preclinical sleep research is of increasing importance, not only due to the role of sleep in memory consolidation, but also because of the link that has been established between sleep disorders and some brain or cardiovascular disorders.

Sleep can be divided in 4 stages which are active wake, quiet wake, slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement (REM).

As manual sleep scoring by visual inspection is extremely time-consuming, emka TECHNOLOGIES offers a  sleep scoring module (part of ecgAUTO software). This throughout automated module differentiates between four sleep stages and calculates global sleep scores. The software applies logical rules to attribute 1 out of 4 sleep stages to each epoch. Threshold values are defined and applicable to any parameter from any input. You can adjust, on the fly, thresholds and see the effect on sleep scoring.

Sleep disturbance are commonly associated with other neurologic disease, such as Parkinson disease, dementia or Huntington’s disease. Several epileptic syndromes have also a tendency to manifest mainly during sleep. These diseases can be studied by combining sleep analysis from EEG signal with other parameters such as:

• Epilepsy from EEG
• Electromyography, from EMG electrodes
• Breathing, from plethysmography (for sleep apnea, for instance).

On freely moving rodents, such studies can be performed with easyTEL implanted telemetry or rodentPACK, combined with whole body plethysmography for respiration. In large animals, EEG along with 3-axis acceleration and synchronized video, can be captured by easyTEL+ implant.

Synchronized video facilitates behavioral observations without the confounding effects of investigator interaction.