“Rapid-eye-movement sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) is not just a precursor but also a critical warning sign of neurodegeneration that can lead to brain disease<\/strong>,” says associate professor and lead author Dr. John Peever. In fact, as many as 80 to 90 per cent of people with RBD will develop a brain disease.”<\/p>\n As the name suggests, the disturbance occurs during the rapid-eye-movement (REM) stage of sleep and causes people to act out their dreams<\/strong>, often resulting in injury to themselves and\/or bed partner. In healthy brains, muscles are temporarily paralyzed during sleep to prevent this from happening.<\/p>\n “It’s important for clinicians to recognize RBD as a potential indication of brain disease in order to diagnose patients at an earlier stage<\/strong>,” says Peever. “This is important because drugs that reduce neurodegeneration could be used in RBD patients to prevent (or protect) them from developing more severe degenerative disorders.”<\/p>\n His research examines the idea that neurodegeneration might first affect areas of the brain that control sleep before attacking brain areas that cause more common brain diseases like Alzheimer’s<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Peever says he hopes the results of his study lead to earlier and more effective treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Professor John Peever is an associate professor in U of T’s Department of Cell and Systems Biology. His research is available in print and online in the latest issue of Trends in Neuroscience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Toronto media release: Researchers at the University of Toronto say a sleep disorder that causes people to act out their dreams is the best current predictor… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[321,10,43],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16669"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16675,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16669\/revisions\/16675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"sleeping](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/sleeping_older_couple.jpg\")
<\/a>Researchers at the University of Toronto say a sleep disorder that causes people to act out their dreams is the best current predictor of brain diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.<\/p>\n