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Functional and structural brain correlates of insomnia before and after sleep therapy| old_uid | 6649 |
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| title | Functional and structural brain correlates of insomnia before and after sleep therapy |
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| start_date | 2009/04/02 |
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| schedule | 11h30 |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | salle conférence |
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| summary | Chronic insomnia affects an increasingly large part of the population, especially at later stages of life. Though patients complain of memory, concentration and attention problems, objective studies measuring cognitive dysfunction are not conclusive on performance decrements. In this presentation, our findings of insomniacs’ performance on a simple and complex vigilance task will first be addressed, comparing chronic insomnia patients with normal sleeping controls. The effects of sleep therapy will also be discussed. Next, the results of functional brain imaging studies in these same groups will be addressed. Insomniacs show hypoactivation in prefrontal brain regions, which is partially reversible after non-medicated sleep therapy. Prefrontal correlates of insomnia are also found when studying grey and white matter differences between insomniacs and controls, not quite covering the same regions however. With these last results more insight is given in the possible underlying personality characteristics of this group and the etiology of this condition. And of course, we need to compare the effects of insomnia on behavioral performance and brain activation to what happens after experimental partial sleep deprivation in the same age group. The differences between both conditions can shed more light on how to, and how not to diagnose and treat chronic insomnia. |
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| responsibles | <not specified> |
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