Effects of Lorazepam on the automatic online evaluation of sleep EEG data in healthy volunteers.

In earlier publications we described an automatic algorithm to detect rapid eye movement (REM) sleep from a single-channel EEG recording without using EMG or EOG information. This system consisted of an artificial neural network operating on the basis of preprocessed EEG data and was composed to provide a maximum of robustness for online applications. In the present study the influence of acute administration of lorazepam on the performance of the REM detection procedure was evaluated. Following an adaptation to laboratory conditions, sleep EEG data were obtained from healthy subjects in three nights each. On the evening of the second night the volunteers received a single dosage of 2.5 mg …