Link found between sleep patterns and TBI recovery
A new study of patients with traumatic brain injuries shows there’s a link between their sleep patterns and recovery. “A study of 30 patients hospitalized for moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries found that sleep quality and brain function improved in tandem, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Neurology,” an article on NPR reads.
“Patients who still had low levels of consciousness and cognitive functioning would sleep for a couple of minutes and then wake up for a couple of minutes, both day and night, says Nadia Gosselin, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Montreal.”
But “when the brain recovered, the [normal] sleep-wake cycle reappeared,” Gosselin says.
The results of the study raise the possibility that patients with brain injuries might recover more quickly if hospitals took steps aimed at restoring their normal sleep patterns. Gosselin recommends utilizing drugs to help patients sleep or making sure patients are exposed to enough sunlight during the day and darkness at night to help with sleeping. A dark, quiet environment helps, she says.
“The findings are consistent with other research showing that sleep is essential to restore body and brain functions,” according to an editorial accompanying the study. “…The authors also cite evidence linking sleep disorders to cognitive changes in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
The idea for the study came from something Gosselin observed in traumatic brain injury patients during her training as a neuropsychologist. The team studied patients at Hopital du Sacre-Coer in Montreal who’d been injured by a motor vehicle accident, a fall or a blow to the head.”
About two to four weeks following an injury, the team would test the patients’ level of consciousness and cognitive function. All the patients wore devices on their wrists that tracked when they were sleeping and when they were awake.
“The researchers hoped to learn whether an improvement in sleep patterns came before signs of brain recovery. What they found, though, was that sleep and brain function improved together, apparently in lock step,” the article reads. “That could be because better sleep simply helped patients perform better on tests of brain function, Gosselin says. But it’s also possible that improved sleep was helping the brain heal.”
Gosselin’s lab is now looking to see whether better sleep really does help patients with brain injuries recover more quickly.
