Emerging research is exploring what PET scans of the brain can reveal about the underlying disease in people with hypersomnia disorders, including narcolepsy, reports Sleep Review

An abstract published in a recent edition of SLEEP, FDG-PET Imaging In Narcolepsy Type 1, Idiopathic Hypersomnia, And Non-Sleepy Controls, finds different patterns of metabolic activity in narcolepsy and in idiopathic hypersomnia. According to the authors, these results imply disease-specific activity rather than non-specific sleepiness.

“We definitely need to know more about neurologic function in both of these disorders.  My hope was that by comparing and contrasting these two groups of sleepy participants—and a group of non-sleepy control participants—we could identify areas of regional hyper- or hypo-metabolism that are shared across both disorders and those that might be a more unique signature of one or the other,” says Trotti.

Read more in Sleep Review.