Evaluation Instruments for Sleep Disorders: A Brief History of Polysomnography and Sleep Medicine
Sleep is a vital biological function and we currently know that sleep disorders are highly prevalent in the population. The history of the development of sleep science and sleep medicine is inextricably tied to the development of polysomnography, used as
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Evaluation Instruments for Sleep Disorders: A Brief History of Polysomnography and Sleep Medicine Jos´e Haba-Rubio and Jean Krieger
Abstract Sleep is a vital biological function and we currently know that sleep disorders are highly prevalent in the population. The history of the development of sleep science and sleep medicine is inextricably tied to the development of polysomnography, used as a means to assess, objectively and in a reproducible way, sleep and wakefulness. Over the past 50 years, technologic advances and scientific progress have permitted huge improvements in the systems used to record sleep. Furthermore, major advances in sleep science and pathology are linked with improvements in the methods of recording and analyzing sleep. It can be asserted that the development of polysomnography transformed sleep research from a speculative area to an experimental science. This chapter has been organized to briefly relate the major developments in sleep medicine and to summarize the evolution of polysomnography. Keywords Sleep medicine • History • Polysomnography
Sleep and dreams have played a central role in the culture of humankind and has fascinated people for a very long time. Sleep occupies a third of our lives; every night the mystery of sleep unfolds before each of us. However, it was not until recently that we had the opportunity to study sleep from a scientific point of view, in other words, beyond the observations of philosophers, poets and prophets.
J. Haba-Rubio, M.D. Center for Investigation and Research in Sleep, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois/Universit´e de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland J. Krieger, M.D., Ph.D. () Facult´e de M´edecine, Universit´e Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France e-mail: [email protected] R.P.-Y. Chiang and S.-C.J. Kang (eds.), Introduction to Modern Sleep Technology, Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering 64, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5470-6 2, © Springer ScienceCBusiness Media Dordrecht 2012
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J. Haba-Rubio and J. Krieger
French scientist Henri Pi´eron (1881–1964) with his work entitled “Le probl`eme physiologique du sommeil” published in 1913, is usually regarded as the pioneer of the modern approach to sleep research. Advances in technology, and in particular the development of polysomnography which allowed the recording of physiologic changes during sleep, was the turning point that enabled a better understanding of sleep and sleep disorders.
2.1 The First Steps: Recording the Electrical Activity of the Brain Once upon a time, sleep was thought to be a passive state; in fact, sleep was defined as the absence of waking consciousness. Indeed, sleep was often associated to death. In ancient Greek mythology Nyx, the Goddess of Night, had twin sons called Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death). Sometimes small figurines depict them as young babies, each suckling on a breast of mother night. Morpheus, the source of dreams, was the son of Hypnos and hence the nephew of Death. This idea that sleep is not an active state runs
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