Topography-specific spindle frequency changes in obstructive sleep apnea

Background: Sleep spindles, as detected on scalp electroencephalography (EEG), are considered to be markers of thalamo-cortical network integrity. Since obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a known cause of brain dysfunction, the aim of this study was to investigate sleep spindle frequency distribution in OSA. Seven non-OSA subjects and 21 patients with OSA (11 mild and 10 moderate) were studied. A matching pursuit procedure was used for automatic detection of fast (≥ 13Hz) and slow (< 13Hz) spindles obtained from 30min samples of NREM sleep stage 2 taken from initial, middle and final night thirds (sections I, II and III) of frontal, central and parietal scalp regions. Results: Compared to non-OSA subjects, Moderate OSA patients had higher central and parietal slow spindle percentage (SSP) in all night sections studied, and higher frontal SSP in sections II and III. As the night progressed, there was a reduction in central and parietal SSP, while frontal SSP remained high. Frontal slow spindle percentage in night section III predicted OSA with good accuracy, with OSA likelihood increased by 12.1% for every SSP unit increase (OR 1.121, 95% CI 1.013 - 1.239, p=0.027). Conclusions: These results are consistent with diffuse, predominantly frontal thalamo-cortical dysfunction during sleep in OSA, as more posterior brain regions appear to maintain some physiological spindle frequency modulation across the night. Displaying changes in an opposite direction to what is expected from the aging process itself, spindle frequency appears to be informative in OSA even with small sample sizes, and to represent a sensitive electrophysiological marker of brain dysfunction in OSA

Analysis of EEG sleep spindle parameters from apnea patients using massive computing and decision tree

In this study, Matching Pursuit (MP) procedure is applied to the detection and analysis of EEG sleep spindles in patients evaluated for suspected OSAS. Elements having the frequency of EEG sleep spindles are selected from different dictionary sizes, with and without a frequency modulation function (chirp) for signal description. This procedure was done with high computational cost in order to find best parameters for real EEG data description. At the end we used the atom parameters as input for a decision tree-based classifier, making possible to obtain a classification according to apnea-hypopnea index group and allowing to see how atom parameters such as frequency and amplitude are affected by the presence of sleep apnea