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Alcohol and Narcolepsy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Donald W. Goodwin
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, 4940 Audubon Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri, 63110, U.S.A.

Extract

Narcolepsy is a syndrome characterized by recurrent sleep attacks and one or more of the following symptoms: cataplexy (transient loss of muscle tone), sleep paralysis (inability to move in the transition between sleep and arousal), and hypnagogic hallucinations (Sours, 1963). Polygraphic sleep studies indicate that narcoleptics have an abnormal sleep record. Normally, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is preceded by 90 to 100 minutes of non-REM sleep, whereas narcoleptics often have an REM-period at the onset of sleep (Hishikawa and Kaneki, 1965; Rechtschaffen et al., 1963).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1970 

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References

Hishikawa, Y., and Kaneki, A. (1965). ‘Electroencephalographic study on narcolepsy.’ Electroenceph. clin. Neurophysiol., 18, 249–59.Google Scholar
Pond, D. A. (1952). ‘Narcolepsy: A brief critical review and study of eight cases.’ J. ment. Sci., 98, 595604.Google Scholar
Rechtschaffen, A., Wolpert, E. A., Dement, W. C., Mitchell, S. A., and Fisher, C. (1963). ‘Nocturnal sleep of narcoleptics.’ Electroenceph. clin. Neurophysiol., 15, 599609.Google Scholar
Sours, J. A. (1963). ‘Narcolepsy and other disturbances in the sleep-walking rhythm: A study of 115 cases with review of the literature.’ Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 137, 525–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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