Insomnia II

This chapter is focused on the different assessment methods used to characterize insomnia, complement its evaluation and, enhance diagnostic accuracy. Besides subjective measures, physiological assessment methods, the most popular being polysomnography, are introduced as well as more refined neurophysiological techniques such as quantitative electroencephalography, neuroimaging, and event-related potentials. A table describing the most commonly used techniques of assessments presents the advantages and disadvantages of each of them. In addition, to compare results obtained from individuals suffering from insomnia to those obtained from good sleepers, this chapter provides a review of the most recent literature while, at times, considering that different subtypes of insomnia exist. As such, some references will be made to different subtypes throughout the chapter. This chapter also briefly reports on the use of the different assessment methods in individuals affected by other sleep disorders. Finally, two tables listing influential research studies related to the neurophysiological assessment techniques complete the chapter.