Doctors Answers (3)
No. Sleep studies monitor different stages of sleep including awake,s tage 1, 2, 3, and REM. If there is a behavior noted during sleep, such as sleep walking it is usually video recorded.
Subjects with night terrors or nightmares often undergo sleep studies to help determine which stage of sleep the problem occurs. Unfortunately, like a lot of events that occur in a periodic fashion, the patient often does not exhibit their night terrors during a sleep study. The content of the terror or nightmare is not monitored so unless the subject vocalizes something related their terror or dream there is no way to determine the content of the dream or triggering mechanism. There is treatment for both disorders.
Sleep studies can characterize night terrors usually a NREM parasomnia in the early part of the sleep cycle from Nightmares usually a REM phenomenon towards the end of the sleep cycle. They can also help differentiate these from nocturnal seizures or REM sleep behaviour disorders.
