Movement disorders associated with sleep

In addition to the syndrome of restless legs and the syndrome of periodic limb movements, this group includes night cramps, bruxism, rhythmic movement disorders, etc.

Rhythmic movement disorders (sleep related rhythmic movement disorder) - a group of stereotypical repetitive movements of the head, trunk and extremities. More often they are observed in men. There are several forms of rhythmic motor disorders.

• Beating with the head is the most known form, more often observed in children under 1 year old. It is manifested by a violent rhythmic beating of the forehead or cheek on the pillow, while the child is raised on elongated arms. It is also possible to swing in the anteroposterior direction in a posture on the elbows and knees with forehead pounding against the wall or knocks against the wall in the sitting position.
• At the headache the child lies on his back with his eyes closed and performs pendulum-like swinging movements from side to side. Movement at this smooth, uniform, their frequency is not more than 30 per min, the duration of the episode is up to 10 minutes. Usually there are up to 10 episodes of swing, each of which consists of 10-100 movements, separated by short intervals. In the morning, children remember well enough the episode of "swinging" in a dream and easily reproduce it. In severe cases, the duration of "swinging" can reach 5 hours, and the number of movements - up to 2000, with the possible occurrence of vomiting, dizziness. Stop the "swing" is not always possible.
• Body heating is the rocking of the body, but without beating the head; sometimes occurs in the form of the phenomenon of "folding", which consists in the rhythmic lifting and lowering of the upper half of the trunk from the position of lying on the back to the sitting and back position.
• There are also such forms of rhythmic motor disorders as telerepression, kicking, kinking.

Episodes of rhythmic motor disorders can be accompanied by sound phenomena (in the form of buzzing, buzzing and even monotonous singing), which in some cases can be quite loud. Stereotyped repetitive motor disorders have varying degrees of intensity, in a number of children they can reach the degree of "motor storm" that lasts for a long time and ends either with a child falling from the bed and waking up, or with a spontaneous ending and subsequent deepening of sleep. At the age of 9 months, individual forms of rhythmic motor disorders are detected in 2/3 of the children, by 18 months their prevalence is reduced by 2 times, and by the age of 4 they are detected only in 8%. Rhythmic motor disorders can occur in otherwise healthy children, as well as in mental retardation, autism and other forms of psychopathology, as well as with increased anxiety. In some cases, rhythmic motor disorders can lead to serious complications (fractures of the skull bones, subdural hematomas, damage to the cervical spine, eye damage, etc.). In the absence of concomitant coarse psychoneurological symptoms (in particular, oligophrenia), the prognosis for rhythmic motor disorders is usually favorable. The polysomnographic picture is non-specific and only demonstrates the presence of a transition from sleep (any stage) to wakefulness, and also allows to differentiate the epileptic and non-epileptic origin of this phenomenon.

[1], [2], [3], [4]