Narcolepsy

[NavajoEverclear]

It's a fairly new discovery, not even recognized as having physiological (thought just to be psychological, caused by variable factors, a definate cause was not known to be the reason for narcolepsy) roots until it was discovered in dogs, who obviously do not fake it, or participate in behavior that goes against natural rhythms (before it was identified doctors would tell narcaleptic's they needed to get more sleep at night).

 

My question is, why did we just barely discover narcalepsy? If it's not a new thing, why isn't it noted in history? If it is new, why? Why did the disorder suddenly start to occur in humans and dogs?

[NavajoEverclear]

just looked this up on google : http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/ngene.html

it is genetic, and not that uncommon ( 1 in 2000 have some degree of it) so whatever mutation causing it must be pretty old, so again i wonder why it wasn't defined in some way until so recently.

[mossoi]

It was almost certainly as prevalent over the past several centuries but wasn't diagnosed correctly.

 

Genetic conditions have previously been viewed with suspicion and were commonly attributed to demonic possession and withcraft in more extreme cases or were confused with other ailments. Something like narcolepsy is hard to spot even today.

 

Also, we sleep a more unnatural rythym than our forefathers and are prone to suffer disturbances in our sleep pattern than those who rose at dawn and went to bed a dusk thereby keeping their body clock closely in touch with the levels of melatonin in the brain.

 

As for catatonics. They were generally assumed dead as the condition is extremely hard to spot. This led to a tendency to tie a bell to the hand of corpses so that should they find themselves alive but buried they could ring it to alert somebody (often once they were disintered they were beheaded for being undead but the thought was there).

[YT2095]

Fascinating subject actualy, there have been certain drugs used for childhood A.D.D. (Ritulin I think it was?) that causes almost the opposite effects in adults used to treat this dissorder.

The effects were quite significant and then Zzzzzz........

 

(someone had to do it eventualy! LOL)

[Kevin Conti]

If it is assumed (and rightly so) that the disorder is caused by bad genetic mutations and/or neurological malfunctions then, of course, the disorder would have existed even before contemporary times. However, like most mental and brain disorders in the past, they were misdiagnosed as being down to supernatural or other fantasy phenomena .

 

And perhaps the only reason the disorder is being found in dogs is that research into the subject has never been so much in abundance as it has been over the last few years. As new brain scanning and investigation techniques become available neuropharmochologists are able to test new drug treatments in response. Almost certainly, similar results would be found on dog cases and more importantly primates so they probably best to test on in preliminary theories on.

[Kevin Conti]

excuse my grammar:

 

are*

[Crash]

theres a "edit" button at the top of each post

Is there a limit to the brain in terms of how far evolved it is to what conditions can affect it, eg narcolepsy dosent affect butterflys( or other less intelligent creatures), or does it?

[BrainMan]

Do butterflys sleep? Do all insects sleep? When, exactly, did sleep evolve? Hmmm...

[Crash]

i wish we were like sharks, they dont sleep if we had 24hrs in a day we could get done everything needed to do

[Pinch Paxton]

Sharks do sleep.

[Kevin Conti]

Crash said in post # :

theres a "edit" button at the top of each post

Is there a limit to the brain in terms of how far evolved it is to what conditions can affect it, eg narcolepsy dosent affect butterflys( or other less intelligent creatures), or does it?

 

You have to understand that most of those orgasnms are no where as near as developed as the human form. Consequently, humans possess far more genetic adaptions and mutations than such smaller creatures. As most of these adaptions are to solve some instinctive problem humans find themselves with neurological and physiological functions, for e.g., intelligence (purpose including to assist in hunting and to attract mates). The process in which this happens is of course natural selection and the mechanism is through randon mutations.

 

However, sometimes these higher order mutations can be bad and individuals who inherit these genes are predisposed to be more likely in receiving the problem (e.g. Narcolespy).

[Crash]

i thought sharks only rested as such and not actually slept?

[Glider]

Some sharks sleep (become dormant, rest on the bottom and do not have to keep swimming). Others do need to keep swimming (i.e. they don't have the ability to pump water through their gills and must relay on their own motion to maintain flow), but still enter a sleep-like state. They manage to keep swimming the same way we manage to keep breathing when we are asleep. Sharks don't have swim bladders so those that can pump water over their gills (e.g. Grey Nurse shark) must rest on the bottom when asleep, unlike other fish which can maintain neutral buoyancy.

 

Dolphins are interesting in that as they can't rest on the bottom to sleep, they have evolved a mechanism by which each hemisphere of their brain sleeps separately.

[Kevin Conti]

I am not farmilar with animal psychology and I cannot elaborate on the procedure in which sharks sleep. But what I will say is that most (if not all?) higher order animals who are physically and mentally developed (in sharks, advanced mating techniques etc, memory) are usually required to have sometime sleeping. The reasons I speculate is similar to why humans sleep. Specifically, to ensure that a degree of physiological restoration and mental relaxation are carried out.

 

However, studying animal sleeping of ones that possess primitive type nervous systems is somewhat difficult to accentuate, particularly as they do not generate the same electroencephalogram patterns of brain activity that psychologists use to record sleep. Almost certainly, however, they do sleep but have difficult mechanisms for it.

 

 

[Skye]

Well the thing is that animals have very wide ranging amounts of sleep they require. At the extremes, lions sleep around 18 hours a day, whereas sheep only sleep around four. I don't think that a lion needs that much sleep to repair itself, but rather that lions are unlikely to get the food to support it staying awake all day, because they live off a fairly small part of the food chain, and nothing much messes with a lion so it'll sleep when it pleases. On the other hand, sheep have much more food available to them (which requires alot more eating to get the same energy), and they are much more vulnerable.

[Kevin Conti]

yes Our sleep cycles of course are influenced by out evolutionary history and survival needs. It is no surprise that the animals most in danger from predators sleep significantly less than other animals who are less at risk.

[ed84c]

We have to remember that in victorian times it was probably diagnosed as lazyness or those who would then become fat, which was noted as being a better class, so was never thought of as a disorder.

[Kevin Conti]

LOL