Sleep Movement Disorder Center

What is a Sleep Movement Disorder and How Can It Be Diagnosed?

Abnormal movements during sleep can disrupt the quality of your sleep leading to decreased daytime functioning. These movements may indicate an abnormality or instability within the nervous system. The severity of these abnormal movements at nighttime vary from benign or mild as in muscle jerks during drowsiness (hypnic jerks), to paralysis upon awakening (sleep paralysis) and to more complicated disorders such as nocturnal seizures, behavioral disorders as seen in Parkinson’s disease and dementia, restless leg movements and periodic limb movements. Other abnormalities occurring in sleep include sleep talking, sleep walking, bruxism (teeth grinding), confusional arousals and early morning headaches.

Diagnosing a sleep movement disorder involves taking a detailed patient history, a review of medication use, family history and physical examination. Most movement disorders can be diagnosed from a patient’s description of symptoms and their physical exam. Neurodiagnostic tests can aid in diagnosing and recording the sleep abnormalities. These tests involve sleep studies, monitoring brain waves with encephalography (EEG), muscle activity with sensors-electromyography (EMG), along with video monitoring and recordings. These tests help with accurate diagnosing and monitoring of management of sleep movement disorders.

Treating or managing a movement disorder during sleep depends on the underlying problem. Simple behavior modification can help lower the frequency of symptoms associated with insufficient sleep at night such as seizures, daytime muscle jerks, sleep walking or sleep talking. At times, taking supplements, such as vitamins like B12 or iron pills, can help ameliorate some types of movement disorders. Others may require pharmacologic agents. Patients with nocturnal seizures will require seizure medications.

If you have a patient who is symptomatic and may benefit from a referral please call (866) 906-5666 to get your patient scheduled. We will provide a fast turnaround time of your patient’s study results and you will be kept apprised of your patient’s progress.