Association between waking EEG slowing and REM sleep behavior disorder in PD without dementia
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 27, 2026

Association Between Sleep Quality and Cognitive Symptoms in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder
Published on: April 26, 2024
J-F Gagnon1, M L Fantini, M-A Bédard
1Centre d'étude du sommeil et des rythmes biologiques, Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Canada.
Objective:
To compare nondemented patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) with and without REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) to healthy controls on quantitative EEG characteristics for both wakefulness and REM sleep.
Methods:
Fifteen patients with PD (7 patients with polysomnographic-confirmed RBD [PD-RBD] and 8 patients without RBD [PD-NRBD]) and 15 healthy control subjects were studied. Each subject underwent a quantitative EEG analysis of both wakefulness and REM sleep.
Results:
During wakefulness, patients with PD-RBD showed a higher theta power in frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital regions in comparison to patients with PD-NRBD and control subjects. Moreover, a slowing of the dominant occipital frequency was observed only in patients with PD-RBD (p < 0.02). Patients with PD-NRBD did not present any slowing of the EEG. No between-group difference in quantitative REM sleep EEG was observed.
Conclusions:
This study demonstrates that the EEG slowing reported during wakefulness in nondemented patients with PD is strongly related to the presence of RBD.
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