Selective enhancement of rapid eye movement sleep by deep brain stimulation of the human pons

• Published in: Annals of neurology Vol. 66; no. 1; pp. 110 - 114
• Main Authors: Lim, Andrew S., Moro, Elena, Lozano, Andres M., Hamani, Clement, Dostrovsky, Jonathan O., Hutchison, William D., Lang, Anthony E., Wennberg, Richard A., Murray, Brian J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company 01.07.2009; Wiley-Liss
• Subjects: Aged; Biological and medical sciences; Deep Brain Stimulation - methods; Female; Human viral diseases; Humans; Infectious diseases; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Neurology; Parkinson Disease - complications; Parkinson Disease - therapy; Polysomnography - methods; Pons - physiology; REM Sleep Behavior Disorder - etiology; REM Sleep Behavior Disorder - therapy; Supranuclear Palsy, Progressive - complications; Supranuclear Palsy, Progressive - therapy; Viral diseases; Viral diseases of the lymphoid tissue and the blood. Aids; Human; Nervous system diseases; Sleep wake cycle; Rapid eye movement sleep; Deep brain stimulation
• ISSN: 0364-5134; 1531-8249
• DOI: 10.1002/ana.21631

Animal studies suggest that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is governed by the interaction of REM‐promoting and REM‐inhibiting nuclei in the pontomesencephalic tegmentum. The pedunculopontine nucleus is proposed to be REM promoting. Using polysomnography, we studied sleep in five parkinsonian patients undergoing unilateral pedunculopontine nucleus deep brain stimulation (DBS). We demonstrated a near doubling of nocturnal REM sleep between the DBS “off” and DBS “on” states, without significant changes in other sleep states. This represents the first demonstration that DBS can selectively modulate human sleep, and it supports an important role for the pedunculopontine nucleus region in modulating human REM sleep. Ann Neurol 2009;66:110–114