Department of Psychology, Brain & Cognition, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Department of Psychiatry, Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience, Amsterdam UMC location Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Sleep. 2022 Sep 8;45(9). doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsac139.
Devastating and persisting traumatic memories are a central symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Sleep problems are highly co-occurrent with PTSD and intertwined with its etiology. Notably, sleep hosts memory consolidation processes, supported by sleep spindles (11-16 Hz). Here we assess the hypothesis that intrusive memory symptoms in PTSD may arise from excessive memory consolidation, reflected in exaggerated spindling. We use a newly developed spindle detection method, entailing minimal assumptions regarding spindle phenotype, to assess spindle activity in PTSD patients and traumatized controls. Our results show increased spindle activity in PTSD, which positively correlates with daytime intrusive memory symptoms. Together, these findings provide a putative mechanism through which the profound sleep disturbance in PTSD may contribute to memory problems. Due to its uniform and unbiased approach, the new, minimal assumption spindle analysis seems a promising tool to detect aberrant spindling in psychiatric disorders.
创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）的一个核心症状是严重且持续的创伤记忆。睡眠问题与 PTSD 高度并发，并与其发病机制交织在一起。值得注意的是，睡眠支持记忆巩固过程，由睡眠纺锤波（11-16Hz）支持。在这里，我们评估了这样一种假设，即 PTSD 中的侵入性记忆症状可能源于过度的记忆巩固，这反映在夸张的纺锤波上。我们使用一种新开发的纺锤波检测方法，该方法对纺锤波表型的假设最小，以评估 PTSD 患者和创伤对照组的纺锤波活动。我们的结果表明，PTSD 患者的纺锤波活动增加，与日间侵入性记忆症状呈正相关。这些发现共同提供了一个假设机制，即 PTSD 中严重的睡眠障碍可能导致记忆问题。由于其统一和无偏的方法，新的、最小假设的纺锤波分析似乎是检测精神障碍中异常纺锤波的有前途的工具。
