Sleep disturbance after mild traumatic brain injury: indicator of injury?

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is a complex entity with no known objective diagnostic markers. To test the hypothesis that sleep disturbances in the acute mTBI period can serve as an indicator of brain injury, the authors compared sleep polysomnograms (PSG) and sleep EEG power spectra (PS) data in seven mTBI subjects with seven age- and race-matched healthy-control subjects. The two groups differed significantly on PS measures, suggesting that mTBI can result in a disruption of sleep microarchitecture and, in theory, could be of use as a marker for brain injury. These pilot findings need to be replicated on larger samples.