Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is a sleep disorder where the dreamer unusually acts out his dreams. It happens during the sleep phase called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The abnormal feature of RBD is loss of muscle paralysis that is associated with REM in normal people. RBD is frequent in Parkinson's disease (PD). PD patients with RBD have a specific pattern of the disease compared to the rest of PD population. In the present study we aimed to determine the brain abnormalities that are specific to PD with RBD. We used MRI brain imaging to compare the brains of 74 PD patients with RBD vs. 260 PD patients without RBD. Compared to PD patients without RBD, we found that PD patients with RBD had a smaller volume in different brain structures particularly in the regions that are known to control muscle paralysis during REM sleep such as the brainstem and the medulla oblongata, as well as in regions that regulate motor activity and sleep-wake cycles such as thalamus, hypothalamus, putamen, and amygdala. We concluded that the presence of RBD in PD patients affects not only the regions that control muscle paralysis but also those that regulate motor activity and sleep-wake cycles.