Book Reviews

Publication of Department and Kleitman’s paper [EEG Journal, 1957] on the polysomnographic features of human sleep first gave clinicians, and neurologists in particular, the long-awaited tools needed for an objective study of sleep disorders and disease. It was after that pioneering study that polysomnographic findings on narcolepsy, sleep terror and sleep walking, restless legs syndrome, nocturnal myoclonus and sleep-related breathing disorders started to appear in the international scientific literature. This was the dawn of what is now known as sleep medicine. The importance of sleep diseases and disorders had a delayed impact on clinical neurology. This was partly due to the fact that setting up and running a sleep laboratory devoted to the early study of sleep and sleep disorders is a difficult and expensive affair. The recent volume on sleep disorders and neurological disease, edited by Culebras and published by Dekker, marks the entry of sleep medicine into the list of basic topics for study in the theoretical and practical training of every neurologist. The book is divided into 20 chapters starting from the history of sleep research and the neurobiology of sleep, moving on to describe neurological diseases and disorders entailing sleep impairment. The sleep diseases span disorders of sleep and breathing in childhood, the intrinsic alteration of sleep schedule and disordered sleep-wake rhythm. Other major chapters are devoted to narcolepsy and obstructive apnoea syndrome, insomnias (agrypnias) of organic origin and sleep-related movement disorders. Further chapters address sleep disorders in degenerative diseases of the CNS, stroke, head injury, multiple sclerosis, headache syndomes and neuromuscular diseases. The possible role of melatonin in sleep and sleep disorders is discussed in a separate chapter focusing on this topic. The whole volume therefore constitutes an overview of the gamut of correlations between sleep disorders and neurological disease. The book’s greatest merit is in providing clear up-to-date information on sleep disorders related to neurological disease, and it will be useful to all those keen to gain insights into these important aspects of modern neurology. Its major flaw, shared by most multiauthored textbooks, is the difference in quality and quantity among the chapters. This occasionally results in some repetition and overlap when similar topics are tackled by different authors. Yet as the ancients used to say, repetita juvant, so that this modest failing could turn out to be an advantage. This volume is an essential addition to the bookshelves of practising neurologists as well as university and hospital libraries. E. Lugaresi, Bologna Leonard F.M. Scinto, Kirk R. Daffner (eds.)