Ace Therapeutics is dedicated to advancing research in the fields of psychiatric disorders and sleep medicine. We can provide sleep-electroencephalogram (Sleep-EGG) testing services based on animal models, including quantitative EEG with spectral analysis, arousal, slow-wave sleep (SWS)/non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM), paradoxical sleep (PS)/rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, acute monitoring, chronic monitoring and seizure detection.

Introduction of Sleep-EEG in Psychiatry

Sleep disturbance is a major symptom of major depressive disorder. EGG is a brain recording procedure used to assess and monitor changes in patterns of electrical activity. Quantitative EGG analysis helps characterize the effects of antipsychotics on brain activity. Most antidepressants inhibit REM sleep in depressed patients, normal controls, and experimental animals. Sleep-EEG can reveal characteristic changes of depression, such as impaired sleep continuity, suppression of REM sleep, and changes in non-REM sleep. Sleep-EEG variables, such as REM latency or certain clusters of variables, have been shown to predict response to certain antidepressant treatments and even disease course over several years. Therefore, sleep-EEG may provide a biomarker for psychosis and antipsychotic treatment.

Fig. 1 EGG for basic sleep studies in mice. (Kreuzer M, et al., 2015)

Sleep-EEG Services

Ace Therapeutics provides Sleep-EEG analysis services for the fields of psychiatry and sleep medicine. Specifically, Sleep-EEG can be used to measure impaired sleep continuity, disinhibition of REM sleep, and changes in non-REM sleep and wakefulness, and can be applied to the study of active molecules in the central nervous system and animal models of psychiatric disorders. We use a scalable telemetry platform that provides custom electrode configurations for EEG, ECoG, and local field potential (LFP) recordings from cortical and subcortical regions, as well as muscle EMG and ECG.

Although the complexity of sleep architecture varies across species, it is relatively conserved in mammals and has comparable features, making it an ideal translational measure. We offer manual or automated sleep scoring. Typical outcome measures generated for each of the 4 sleep stages (active and quiet arousal, NREM and REM sleep) include REM onset, NREM onset, REM latency, sleep duration, sleep architecture, hypnograms, as well as sleep transition, microarousals, continuous REM episodes, and sleep spindles.

What Can We Help You Achieve in Psychiatry with Sleep-EEG?

• Predictive biomarkers linked to depression treatment
• Studying various cognitive symptoms associated with major depressive disorder
• Studying the neurophysiology of sleep
• Investigating the relationship between autism spectrum disorder symptoms and the atypical organization and/or function of the thalamocortical circuit during REM sleep

Ace Therapeutics can simultaneously measure different biological characteristics including EEG, electromyogram, electrocardiogram, temperature, activity and sleep-wake state. These indicators are important circadian rhythms and stress-related bioelectrical potentials that can be used in efficacy or safety studies of anti-psychotic drugs. If you would like more information about this service, please feel free to make an inquiry.

Reference

1. Kreuzer M, et al. Sleep scoring made easy-Semi-automated sleep analysis software and manual rescoring tools for basic sleep research in mice. MethodsX. 2015, 2:232-240.