Sofya Kulikova, a researcher at HSE University in Perm, is part of an international research team that has discovered potential mechanisms that explain the sleep spindle deficit in electroencephalograms (EEG) of people with schizophrenia. The article was published in theSchizophrenia Research on June 5. Individuals with schizophrenia are often characterized by a deficit of sleep spindles–specific bursts in the brain’s electrical activity that can be recorded by EEG while the patient is sleeping. Such a disorder is also observed in patients with other psychoses or predisposition to them.
These observations confirm the role of NMDA receptors in sleep disorders that accompany psychotic states. NMDA receptor blockade in rats was accompanied by changes in the strength of connection between the thalamus and the thalamic reticular nucleus, which led to changes in EEG oscillations. Similar changes in brain activity may also appear in patients with schizophrenia, but this assumption requires further confirmation.
Read more at: https://neurosciencenews.com/nmda-psychosis-sleep-16498/