A Polysomnographic Study of Parkinson’s Disease Sleep Architecture

Figure 1

Sleep circuitry drawings of the arousal system affected in PD. Sleep arousal circuit. (a) The monoaminergic arousal system (yellow) includes neurons projecting from the noradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC), the serotoninergic dorsal raphe, the histaminergic tuberomammillary nucleus (TMN), and the dopaminergic ventral periaqueductal gray matter (vPAG). The cholinergic pedunculopontine nucleus (PPT) and the lateral-dorsal tegmental nuclei (LDT) send projections to the thalamus and promote the sensory information (green) to the cortex. (b) These ascending projections will contact the prefornical (PeF) orexin hypothalamic neurons (red) and the cholinergic basal forebrain neurons (BF), before directly innervating the cerebral cortex. Sleep inhibitory circuit. (c) The VLPO send inhibitory projections (light blue) to the components of the arousal circuit inhibiting them during sleep.

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