Sleep Patterns in Normal and Psychotic Children

RECENT evidence suggests a relationship in humans between reduction of stage-4 sleep (viz, high voltage, slow waves) and varying degrees of thought disturbance. Notable are the reports of marked decrease in stage-4 patterning in chronic schizophrenic patients 1-6 and patients with depression and manic-depressive illness, depressed phase. 7-10 Moreover, Feinberg and Carlson 11 observed stage-4 sleep to be a hyperbolic function of age, with verbal performance IQ a parabolic function showing maximum decline at periods of minimum stage-4 sleep. Hallucinations accompanying the symptoms of acute alcohol withdrawal were found to be inversely related to amount of stage-4 sleep. 12 The present investigation studied the allnight sleep electroencephalograms and power-density configurations for a group of psychotic and normal prepuberal children. Particular attention was focused on whether stage-4 sleep was affected in the psychotic population who were clearly manifesting thought disorders. Methods Subjects.—This study included 12 boys and seven