A Case of Exploding Head Syndrome: Focus on Polysomnographic Finding

Received December 14, 2011 Revised December 24, 2011 Accepted December 26, 2011 Address for correspondence Won Chul Shin, MD Department of Neurology, College of Medicine, Kyung Hee University, 892 Dongnam-ro, Gangdong-gu, Seoul 134-727, Korea Tel: +82-2-440-6166 Fax: +82-2-440-7243 E-mail: shinwc@khu.ac.kr Exploding head syndrome is a rare nocturnal disorder that the patient experiences a loud sound. The events occur usually during a period of drowsiness preceding sleep. The polysomnography studies in exploding head syndrome are very rare. We report a case of exploding head syndrome that a total of 8 typical episodes were recorded in polysomnography. A 51 years old female was admitted due to nocturnal loud sound from 2 month ago. There was no headache and no history of sleep problems. During the polysomnography, the events recorded 8 times, 6 of the events occurred during waking time prior to sleep onset, 2 developed in N1 sleep. In our case, the events appear to arise from early drowsiness with predominant alpha rhythm, with interspersed theta activity. J Korean Sleep Res Soc 2011;8:45-47