What Is Polysomnography?

Many scientists all over the world have all attempted to explain the physiological and psychological effects of peoples sleep and dreams. In spite of this, up until this century and with few exceptions, everyone has always thought that while a person slept, their body and brain went into an inactive state. It wasn’t until 1928 when a German psychiatrist that goes by the name of Hans Berger discovered electrical activity inside of the human brain and distinguished differences in these rhythms when the patients were sleeping and when they were awake. It wasn’t until many years later that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, or dream sleep as some call it, was described. When the convincing evidence of this was provided from studies that the brain is very much active during REM sleep and while certain areas or parts of the …show more content…
This gave way to new possibilities for the way we study sleep and sleep disorders, and since then, the overnight diagnostic tests has been known as polysomnography. Polysomnography tests record many things like the brain activity, a person’s heart rate, a person’s breathing patterns, as well as movements of various parts of the human body. The use of polysomnography is now the standard in which tests for quantifying sleep and for assessing abnormal physiological events in sleep. Such as sleep apnea, periodic movements, electroencephalographic abnormalities and arousals are performed. Inadequate sleep or a person’s poor sleeping habits can result in drowsiness and impaired alertness and cognitive ability, thereby reducing a person’s productivity on the job and increasing the opportunity for human error and fatigue-related accidents. Over the last decade or so, there has been an increasing awareness of the health and economic consequences caused by the sleep deprivation and poor sleep