Perception and memory of sleep/wake states: implications for the treatment of insomnia

Among the historically loose strands in insomnia research have been the observations that: 1. sleep produces a form of mesograde amnesia; 2. patients with insomnia tend to differ from good sleepers in their perception of sleep/wake states; and 3. That sleep state misperception is reversed by some hypnotics. This brief note suggests that these observations, made in the 1980s and 1990s, along with studies of the arousal thresholds from sleep and investigations of the amnesia associated with sleep, might have renewed relevance for our current understanding of the pathophysiology and treatment of insomnia.