[New hope for patients with narcolepsy].
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Gordon Wildschiødtz.
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SUMMARY: We describe three cases of nonconvulsive status epilepticus induced by electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Nonconvulsive status epilepticus is an important differential diagnosis in patients who develop prolonged confusion after ECT. The present cases exemplify the difficulty in defining the diagnosis on the basis of the clinical manifestations. The application of electroencephalography is recommended in monitoring patients with prolonged confusion following ECT. Concurrent drug therapy and ECT is discussed.
It has previously been demonstrated that sleeping and sedated young children respond with a paradoxical decrease in the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal in the rostro-medial occipital visual cortex during visual stimulation. It is unresolved whether this negative BOLD response pattern is of developmental neurobiological origin particular to a given age or to a general effect of sleep or sedative drugs. To further elucidate this issue, we used fMRI and positron emission tomography (PET) to study the brain activation pattern during visual stimulation in spontaneously sleeping adult volunteers. In five sleeping volunteers fMRI studies confirmed a robust signal decrease during stimulation in the rostro-medial occipital cortex. A similar relative decrease at the same location was found during visual stimulation and polysomnographically verified slow-wave sleep in a separate group of six subjects using H(2)(15)O PET measures of the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). This decrease was more rostro-dorsal compared to the relative rCBF increase along the calcarine sulcus found during visual stimulation in the awake state. This study reconfirms the previously described paradoxical stimulation-correlated negative BOLD signal change in the rostro-medial occipital cortex, expanding this response mode to an age spectrum ranging from the newborn to the adult. Further, the use of complementary brain mapping techniques suggests that this decrease was secondary to a relative rCBF decrease. Possible mechanisms for the paradoxical response pattern during sleep include an active inhibition of the visual cortex or a disruption of an energy-consuming process.
This paper details the first study of the effects of dopamine D1 receptor antagonism on the regulation of human sleep EEG (electroencephalogram). The investigational drug NNC-687 (NNC 01-0687/CEE 03-310) was administered to 20 healthy young men in doses of 5, 10, and 15 mg in a double blinded, placebo controlled, crossover design. In rats, dopamine D1 receptor antagonism can produce large increases in the amounts of both rapid eye-movement (REM) and non-rapid eye-movement (NREM) sleep. In this study, drug effects were most prominent in the first NREM period. D1 antagonism markedly reduced the peak-amplitude of delta EEG waves but increased their instantaneous frequency as well as enhancing the total number, incidence, and burst-duration of sleep spindles. The length of the first NREM period was increased up to 47% over baseline. Despite these large increases in NREM sleep time, the amount of delta EEG power accumulated over the first NREM period was conserved at baseline levels. We note that the sleep-EEG profile of D1 antagonism is very similar to that of GABAA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) receptor modulators and suggest that D1 antagonism may alter the properties of the neuronal networks which generate delta and spindle, and K-complex EEG waveforms through the upstream modulation of GABAA receptor activity.