Preliminary communication: intellectual deficit and sleep-related respiratory disturbance in the elderly

Polysomnography and neuropsychological tests administered to 41 nondemented male subjects (mean age, 69.5) indicated that impaired performance was associated with sleep-related respiratory disturbance. Such deficits could reflect deficits in vigilance or cortical insult resulting from nightly hypoxemia. Whether the degree of impairment observed here predicts more severe dementia will await longitudinal studies.