Bilateral damage to the basal ganglia causes auto-activation deficit, a neuropsychological syndrome characterized by striking apathy, with a loss of self-driven behaviour that is partially reversible with external stimulation. Some patients with auto-activation deficit also experience a mental emptiness, which is defined as an absence of any self-reported thoughts. We asked whether this deficit...
Objective: Dreams enacted during sleepwalking or sleep terrors (SW/ST) may differ from those enacted during rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD). Methods: Subjects completed aggression, depression, and anxiety questionnaires. The mentations associated with SW/ST and RBD behaviors were collected over their lifetime and on the morning after video polysomnography (PSG). The reports...
To test whether mental activities collected from non-REM sleep are influenced by REM sleep, we suppressed REM sleep using clomipramine 50mg (an antidepressant) or placebo in the evening, in a double blind cross-over design, in 11 healthy young men. Subjects were awakened every hour and asked about their mental activity. The marked (81%, range 39-98%) REM-sleep suppression induced by...