After a TBI, people also experience major sleep problems, including changes in their sleep-wake cycle. A new study shows that recovering from these two conditions occurs in parallel. The study is published in the December 21, 2016, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “These results suggest that monitoring a person’s sleep-wake cycle may be a useful tool for assessing their recovery after TBI,” said study author Nadia Gosselin, PhD, of the University of Montréal in Québec, Canada. “We found that when someone sustained a brain injury and had not recovered a certain level of consciousness to keep them awake and aware of their surroundings, they were not able to generate a good sleep-wake cycle. But as they recovered, their quality of sleep improved.”
The study involved 30 people, ages 17 to 58, who had been hospitalized for moderate to severe TBI. Most of the patients were in a coma when they were admitted to the hospital. Researchers found that consciousness and thinking abilities improved hand-in-hand with measures of quality of sleep, showing a linear relationship. “It’s possible that there are common underlying brain mechanisms involved in both recovery from TBI and improvement in sleep,” said Gosselin. “Still, more study needs to be done and future research may want to examine how hospital lighting and noise also affect quality of sleep for those with TBI.”
Read more at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161222095319.htm