The Role of the Circadian System in Neurological Sleep-wake Disorders

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of the circadian system in patients with neurologic sleep-wake disorders. Therefore, overnight sleep will be distributed over 30 hours into repetitive sleep-wake cycles (poly-nap protocol), so that sleep episodes occur at different circadian phases. Vigilance, attention, risk behavior as well as sleep onset latency will be observed. Ambulatory accelerometer recordings gain more and more attention in the diagnostic work-up of sleep disorders, as they allow to also include the everyday rest-activity rhythm before examinations in the sleep laboratory. Advances of novel devices should improve the detection of rest and activity and therefore the estimation of sleep and wake, especially in patients with neurologic sleep-wake disorders exhibiting fragmented sleep. Two types of actimeters will be applied throughout our study protocol to explore better classification of sleep and wake phases and patterns of the rest-activity rhythm. This study is designed as an observational case-controlled study targeting the disorders of narcolepsy type 1 and idiopathic hypersomnia, and including interventional procedures in the healthy control group (sleep deprivation, sleep restriction) in a counter-balanced design.