Narcolepsy - paroxysms of an insuperable sleepiness with development of dependence on an external situation.

Etiology. Disease or is characterized by idiopathic suffering of the unknown nature (sometimes genetically determined), or is bound to a lesion of a hypothalamus and a brainstem (a tumour, an encephalitis).

Signs, current. Repeated attacks of a dream, nothing differing from normal, but arising in an inadequate situation. Duration of a dream of usually some minutes, occasionally till several o'clock, frequency of paroxysms from one up to several within day. Many patients suffer a cataplexy at which on a background of clear consciousness there comes deenergizing a muscle tone that leads to falling; the cataplexy is in most cases provoked by bright positive and negative emotions (laughter, anger). A symptom-complex close to a cataplexy decubitus paralites: episodes of impossibility of movements within several minutes after a dream; more rare signs: hallucinations (hallucinations at a backfilling), psychotic episodes, a noctambulation, a diplopia during decubitus paralites, disturbance of a night dream. The raised day time sleepiness reminding a narcolepsy, is observed at a Pickwickian syndrome: an obesity, pulmonary heart, a restless night dream. Unlike a narcolepsy at this syndrome there are no neither cataplexies, nor decubitus paralites.