Sleep Disorders

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  • Created by: Amy
  • Created on: 14-01-13 21:10
What are dyssomnias?
Sleep disorders affecting the amount, quality/timing of sleep (insomnia/narcolepsy)
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What are parasomnias?
Behavioural or physiological events that occur during sleep (sleepwalking and nightmares)
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What is primary insomnia?
Chronic insomnia in the absence of any psychological or physical condition that might explan the disorder
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What is one of the most severe forms of these?
Idiopathic insomnia, which begins in childhood and is lifelong
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How is anxiety linked with primary insomnia?
Primary insomnia is more common in people with higher than average levels of anxiety
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What does high levels of arousal do?
Interferes with the brain's sleep mechanisms
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What di Vgontzas et al find in insomniacs?
Have increased levels of ACTH and cortisol (linked with stress)
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What is a weakness of this?
You can't establish cause and effect
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What's a strength of this?
Techniques to reduce arousal are usually effective
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What is secondary insomnia?
Chronic insomnia that can be explained by a pre-existing psychological or physical condition
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What psychological disorders explain secondary insomnia?
Depression, anxiety states, schizophrenia
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What did Morin et al find?
40% of patients seeking treatment for insomnia have an associated psychological disorder
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How can heart failure, asthma and Parkinson's disease lead to insomnia?
Some treatments can lead to insomnia e.g. the use of steroids for treating asthma
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How can drug use explain secondary insomnia?
Amphetamines and alcohol (stimulants) and overuse of sleeping pills can lead to disrupted sleep patterns and insomnia
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What is Fatal Familial Insomnia?
A rare genetic condition where a person sleeps normally until around middle age, then severe insomnia develops with leads to death
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What two personality factors lead to secondary insomnia?
Neuroticism and Chronotypes
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What is neuroticism?
People who are neurotic are more likely than the average to experience such feelings as anxiety, anger, envy, guilt, and depressed mood.
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What did Vahters et al find following traumatic life events?
Vulnerability to sleep disorders increases following traumatic life events e.g. divorce is highly correlated with the personality trait of anxiety
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What are chronotypes?
Some people are aroused, alert and functioning well in the morning (larks) and others function well in the evenings (owls). The circadian rhythm of larks is 2 hours ahead of owls. These control our sleep behaviour, arousal levels and alertness
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What is this determined by?
Our genetics
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What is sleep apnoea?
A disorder where a person stops breathing whilst asleep
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How often may this occur?
Up to 5-30 times an hour
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Why does this have a major disruptive effect on sleeo?
They keep waking through the night
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What is Obstructive Sleep Apnoea
Caused by the airways being obstructed in some way - linked with obesity
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What is central sleep apnoea linked with?
Heart problems
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How many people were followed up in Gregory's longitudinal study in New Zealand?
1000 children born in 1972
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What was the main variable studied?
Family conflict
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How was this assessed?
Using questionnaires
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What did the questionnaires measure?
Tension, hostility, distress and experiences such as seperation and divorce.
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What factors were controlled?
Socio-economic status, gender, health and depression
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What did he find?
The amount of family conflict experienced between age 9 and 15 significantly correlated with the frequency of insomnia at age 18
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What did they conclude?
That there is a possible relationship between family conflict and later sleep problems. They suggested that insecurity may lead to high levels of anxiety and a tendency to focus on family difficulties
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What are the strengths of this study?
Parental consent, consent, right to withdraw
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What are the weaknesses?
Actual percentage at age 18 was only 15%; relitavely small group in which to study the effects of so many variables; culture bias; cannot determine cause and effect; may be due to other factors
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What kind of sleep disorder is sleepwalking?
Parasomnia
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Why can it only happen in NREM?
In REM our muscles our paralysed
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How does the psychodynamic theory explain sleepwalking?
It suggests that someone has a desire to sleep where they did as a child
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What doesn't this explain?
The automatic acts the sleepwalker carried out - making tea, cleaning
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What does Freud also suggest?
When we move from REM to NREM phases we are unable to work through these anxieties so they spill over into NREM and are channelled into motor activities
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What is a weakness of this theory?
It is unfalsifiable
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What did Bakwin study in 19 MZ and 14 DZ twins?
Found a concordance rate for sleepwalking: 47% in MZ twins and 7% in DZ twins
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Why does this support the biological theory?
Because concordance rate is higher for MZ twins, they share 100% of genetic makeup
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What is a weakness?
Concordance rate is not 100% so environmental factors must be at play
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What did Bakwin also find?
A tendency within families for sleepwalking - far more siblings of MZ sleep walkers walked in their sleep
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What was Hublin's Finnish study of over 11,000 participants about?
They answered questions about the frequency of sleepwalking both in childhood and adulthood
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What did they find?
That in males there was a genetic influence of 66% in childhood and 80% in adulthood and in females there was a genetic influence of 57% in childhood and 36% in adulthood
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What is a strength of this study?
Large sample of both males and females
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What is a weakness of this study?
Culture bias; retrospective (may not remember); reductionist as it simplifies sleepwalking to be caused by genetic factors alone; focus on nature
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When does narcolepsy begin?
Adolescence or early adulthood and continues throughout life
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It is thought that there is a malfunction in what that causes narcolepsy?
The system that regulates REM
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What supports this?
Cataplexy; sleep paralysis;hypnagogic hallucinations; narcoleptics fall straight into REM, extreme daytime tiredness - limited NREM
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What did Sigel find with narcoleptic dogs?
Cataplexy is linked to the activation of cells that would usually only be activated in REM sleep
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What are the weaknesses of this study?
Difficult to generalise to humans, reductionist, focus on nature
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What neurotransmitter (or its receptors) is thought to be linked to narcolepsy?
Orexin
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What did Thannickal, Moore and Niehuis find?
Orexin producing cells in the hypothalamus are reudced in people with narcolepsy
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What did Wickens find?
Orexin is involved in controlling REM sleep
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What did psychologists find in narcoleptic dogs with selective breeding?
A gene defect is responsible - the gene responsible for regulating brain receptors for orexin
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What did Nishino et al find in narcoleptic humans?
Low levels of orexin in their cerebrospinal fluid
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Why is the genetic theory not entirely supported?
narcolepsy usually develops during the teenage years, why not from birth? whilst MZ twins have a higher concordance rate than DZ twins, it is still only 30%, there must be environmental factors
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What are more weaknesses?
Selective breeding is unethical; difficulty determining cause and effect (narcolepsy -> low levels of orexin or low levels of orexin -> narcolepsy); reductionist
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

What are parasomnias?

Back

Behavioural or physiological events that occur during sleep (sleepwalking and nightmares)

Card 3

Front

What is primary insomnia?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What is one of the most severe forms of these?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

How is anxiety linked with primary insomnia?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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