Clinical characteristics and pathogenesis of sleep disorder in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD) caused by various natural disasters and man-made events has gradually become the highlight of neuroscientists. Sleep disorders after PTSD can impair the effect of treatment and affect the patient's prognosis. In addition, treatment for sleep problems can be effective in improving outcomes for people with PTSD, which indicates that it is significant to pay attention to sleep disorders after PTSD. However, current studies have focused more on the incidence of PTSD and severity of related symptoms after a traumatic event, and less on the occurrence and mechanism of sleep disorders after PTSD. A number of articles on stress and sleep disorders published in recent years provide reliable clues to understand the probable mechanisms of sleep disorders after PTSD. After summarizing the latest research results, this article finds that the occurrence of sleep disorder after PTSD may be related to the changes of connectivity between insula, hippocampus and medial-prefrontal cortex. Apart from that, decline in the mean phase difference of slow spindles in PTSD patients may reflect pathological changes in the thalamic cortical circuit, which may contribute to the objective diagnosis of PTSD and the development of sleep-focused interventions. This paper provides a systematic review of changes in sleep characteristics and possible neural circuitry mechanisms after PTSD from clinical and basic perspectives, which may provide potential directions for future researches on the pathological mechanism of sleep disorders after PTSD and screening novel intervention targets.