Sleep question

[Perrotfish]

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Alright, not having a lot of luck with goodle/uptodate/pubmed here, hoping someone can help. Is there such a thing as a congenital inability to enter REM sleep? If so what is it called and what does it do to you? Also, what part of the brain would need to be injured for this to happen.? Sorry for the extremely lay person sounding question, neurology has always been my weak subject

 

[turkeyjerky]

Hmm, I don't know. I've never heard of it, if there is. I do know that preventing rats in the lab from entering REM sleep ends up killing them after about 40 days or so. Narcolopsy is a disorder of dysregulated REM sleep, if that's what you're after. It's caused by destruction of the hypocretin producing neurons in the hypothalamus. Sorry, this prolly wasn't all that helpful.

 

[eablackwell]

It can supposedly be caused by chiari malformation. Your questions reminded me of an article I read awhile ago about a 3 yr old kid in orlando that had never fallen asleep. Here's a link to a news report on it.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=6711810&page=1

 

[D elegans]

It can supposedly be caused by chiari malformation. Your questions reminded me of an article I read awhile ago about a 3 yr old kid in orlando that had never fallen asleep. Here's a link to a news report on it.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=6711810&page=1

That sounds like utter hell. I cannot imagine the torture you must feel with that condition.