How Experience Shapes Our Health Behaviour

The experience of our environment stimulates our perception and our ability to learn. This learning ability is enhanced by the quality and duration of our sleep [1-3]. Recent results have shown that repetitive stimuli influence cortical neuron responses and their mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, as well as their learning and consolidation process during sleep [3]. It is easy to see why sleep disorders such as insomnia, narcolepsy and sleepwalking; are continually associated with cognitive or memory deficits. This reality can occur as much in healthy subjects as in mental health, as in individuals with diagnoses of neurological disorders such as Parkinson's or people with depression [4]. Sleep disorders may be the result of a neurological disorder (anxiety, depression and dementia) or an early stage neurodegenerative disease (Parkinson's disease and Parkinson's disease). Alzheimer) [5-8], or be the cause of brain imbalance (cognitive impairment or decreased alertness). Among the sleep disorders that best characterize this cerebral dysfunction, we find insomnia (eg: frequent awakenings, maintenance of difficult sleep, early awakening) and excessive daytime sleepiness (eg: sleep attacks, frequent sleepiness during the day). These sleep disturbances have multifactorial and varied causes (eg: pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease, medication, co-morbidities such as cognitive disorders and psychiatric disorders) [8]. Stress is a determinant of sleep disorders.