Therapeutic Sleep for Traumatic Brain Injury

This proposal will test the hypothesis that correcting sleep disorders can have a therapeutic effect, improving recovery and breaking the cycle where impaired sleep further damages the brain. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is an excellent testing ground for this hypothesis. The majority of TBI patients develop sleep disorders, a correlation that is extremely prevalent in military personnel, where up to 97% of deployed soldiers who develop TBI also report sleep disorders. Unlike other neurological disorders, TBI can be directly induced in model organisms. Because sleep before TBI can be measured, we will know exactly how TBI changes sleep in each subject and how to correct post-TBI sleep back to baseline levels.