Toward a Real-time Access to Sleepers' Mental Content (SleepDance)

Sleep is crucial for global cognitive functioning, but its exact functions and mechanisms are still poorly understood. Cognitive studies of sleep typically rely on linking electrophysiological changes measured during sleep with behavioral and neural changes collected in tasks performed during wakefulness. What concomitantly happens in the mind of sleeping subjects is often ignored, certainly because it is virtually inaccessible. Yet, major advances in the understanding of human behaviors have resulted from an integrated approach that combines both neural and cognitive measures of their ongoing mental processes. The goal of this study is to provide real-time measures of the cognitive processes occurring within sleep.

To prompt real-time access to the sleeping mind, investigators will use auditory stimulation in people with unique sleep peculiarities: sleepwalkers whose overt behaviours may enable to objectively visualize ongoing cognitive processes during non-REM (NREM) sleep.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Sleepwalking; Memory Consolidation; Memory Reactivation
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: differences of behavior between sleepwalking and non sleepwalking patient

Detailed Description

Investigators aim to offer a quantifiable, real-time measure of memory processing during NREM sleep by using memory-related cues to influence which behaviours sleepwalkers will exhibit. Because sleepwalking is characterized by complex behaviors emerging from NREM sleep, it could provide an observable window into mental activity in NREM sleep. While neuronal memory reactivations have largely been demonstrated in sleeping rodents, evidence for the existence of such reactivations in humans is at best indirect. Here, investigators will use targeted memory reactivation (TMR), a tool that allows to control which individual memories are reactivated on a trial by trial basis. TMR consists in associating sensory cues with a specific learning, then re-applying these cues during subsequent sleep to trigger the reactivation of the corresponding learning. Sleepwalkers will be trained on a modified version of the serial reaction time task: sleepwalkers will perform as fast and accurately as possible a sequence of gestures in response to auditory cues. Investigators goals are to: i) show that playing the auditory cues during NREM sleep triggers a behavioral replay of the learned 'choreography' in sleepwalkers, ii) quantify, with a gesture recognition algorithm, how the sleep gestures differ from the wake ones (speed, accuracy, sequence fidelity), and iii) test whether this evoked replay is accompanied by a congruent dream.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Anticipated): 200
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Isabelle Arnulf, MD PhD; Phone Number: 01 42 16 77 04; Email: Isabelle.arnulf@aphp.fr
• Study Contact Backup: Name: Delphine Oudiette, PhD; Phone Number: 01 42 16 77 16; Email: delphine.oudiette-ext@aphp.fr

Study Locations

• France
  • Paris, France, 75013
    • Recruiting
    • Service des Pathologies du Sommeil, Hôpital Pitié-Salpétrière
    • Contact: Delphine Oudiette, PhD; Phone Number: 01 42 16 77 16; Email: delphine.oudiette-ext@aphp.fr
    • Contact: Isabelle Arnulf, MD, PhD; Phone Number: 01 42 16 77 04; Email: isabelle.arnulf@aphp.fr

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 35 years (Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Age between 18-35 y.o
• Written consent
• Affiliated to social security
• Sleepwalking (group patients only)

Exclusion Criteria:

• Psychiatric or neurologic disorder
• Sleep disorder except sleepwalking for the patient group
• Surdity
• Pain or physical disability affecting the upper limbs
• Consumption of drugs altering sleep structure
• Subjects under legal protection

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Other
• Allocation: Non-Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Sleepwalking patient	Behavioral: differences of behavior between sleepwalking and non sleepwalking patient; movement registry done by camera when low intensity sound are send to patient during sleep.
Active Comparator: Non sleepwalking patient	Behavioral: differences of behavior between sleepwalking and non sleepwalking patient; movement registry done by camera when low intensity sound are send to patient during sleep.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Behavioral reaction	number of behavioral reactivations of the motor sequence following the auditory cues during sleep	2 days

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Evaluation of targeted memory reactivation (TMR) success in sleepwalkers by movements test	test whether performance is better for movements that have been cued during sleep (vs. uncued ones) in sleepwalkers	2 days
Quantification of movements exhibited during sleep	The quantification of movement will be evaluated by combinaison of the reaction time, speed and precision of movements exhibited by sleepwalkers during sleep vs. wakefulness	2 days
Determination of the link between dream and sensory cues	Comparison between the number of dreams related to the motor sequence on the 2nd night (after TMR) vs. during the 1st one.	2 days

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris
• Collaborators: Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale, France
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Isabelle Arnulf, MD PhD, APHP; Study Director: Delphine Oudiette, PhD, Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale, France

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): March 31, 2023
• Primary Completion (Anticipated): March 30, 2025
• Study Completion (Anticipated): March 30, 2025

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: June 17, 2022
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: July 7, 2022
• First Posted (Actual): July 11, 2022

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): May 8, 2023
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 5, 2023
• Last Verified: October 1, 2022

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: sleep; memory consolidation; reactivation; sleepwalking; dream; targeted memory reactivation
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Mental Disorders; Nervous System Diseases; Sleep Wake Disorders; Parasomnias; Sleep Arousal Disorders; Somnambulism
• Other Study ID Numbers: APHP220764

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: UNDECIDED

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No