Morphological Changes in Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder with the abnormal regulation of the sleep-wake cycle, resulting in excessive daytime sleepiness, disturbed nocturnal sleep, and manifestations related to rapid eye movement sleep such as cataplexy, sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucination.Over the past decade, numerous neuroimaging studies, have been performed to characterize the pathophysiology and various clinical features of narcolepsy.Here we review structural findings based on brain magnetic resonance imaging in narcolepsy with cataplexy, which include voxel-based morphometry, cortical thickness analyses, and hippocampal volumetry.The current state of research suggests that structural neuroimaging is a useful tool to investigate and understand the anatomical correlates and brain abnormalities of narcolepsy.