Diagnosing Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy can be confirmed or ruled out by a polysomnography test given under carefully controlled conditions. Brain waves, eye movements, muscle activity and other key physiological functions are monitored during sleep. In normal individuals there is an orderly transition from wakefulness to non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep, followed by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the state in which dreaming occurs. Patients with narcolepsy, however, go directly from wakefulness to REM sleep. The paralytic and hallucinatory symptoms of narcolepsy are due to this rapid transition.