Scientists Find Key to Dying While Asleep
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Contributed by Carla Sharetto| 09 August, 2005 01:55 GMT
In some cases, dying in one's sleep may be due to the loss of certain specialized brain cells that regulate breathing.
People who die in their sleep may stop breathing due to a cumulative loss of brain cells in their breathing-command post, according to a new study published in the online edition of
Nature Neuroscience.
"We wanted to reveal the mechanism behind central sleep apnea, which most commonly affects people after age 65," said Jack Feldman, the study's principal investigator and distinguished professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
"Unlike obstructive sleep apnea -- in which a person stops breathing when their airway collapses -- central sleep apnea is triggered by something going awry in the brain's breathing center," he explained.
Role of PreBotC Neurons
In earlier research, Feldman's team pinpointed a brainstem region as the command post for generating breathing in mammals. They dubbed it "the preB |
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