Brain Mapping in Sleep Medicine

In this article, we discuss the contribution of neuroimaging (essentially on MRI, single-photon emission computed tomography, and positron emission tomography) to the understanding of frequent sleep disorders: sleep-related breathing disorders, restless limb syndrome, insomnia, and narcolepsy. The article illustrates the difficulty of teasing apart cerebral causes from consequences of these sleep disorders. It also calls for novel experimental paradigms based on our current understanding of sleep/wakefulness regulation and novel multimodal neuroimaging techniques to reveal the neural underpinning of these disabling diseases.