Sleep medicine reviews
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Sleep medicine reviews · Oct 2002
ReviewNeurobiological bases for the relation between sleep and depression.
The serotoninergic system is involved in the regulation of sleep and wakefulness, its activity being at maximum during the awake state and minimum during sleep. In particular, the production of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep depends on the decrease of serotoninergic tone in brain stem structures. Thus, serotoninergic compounds which increase this tone (such as antidepressants) induce inhibition of REM sleep. ⋯ Sleep deprivation also induces an activation of serotoninergic neurons due to prolonged wakefulness, and leads to similar serotoninergic adaptive processes. The common neurobiological mechanisms resulting from pharmacological antidepressant treatment and sleep deprivation suggest that sleep loss in some insomniac or in depressed patients might be an endogenous compensatory process which would be therapeutical rather than pathological. This proposal should open the way to new strategies in the treatment of depression.