Power law versus exponential state transition dynamics: application to sleep-wake architecture.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Despite the common experience that interrupted sleep has a negative impact on waking function, the features of human sleep-wake architecture that best distinguish sleep continuity versus fragmentation remain elusive. In this regard, there is growing interest in characterizing sleep architecture using models of the temporal dynamics of sleep-wake stage transitions. In humans and other mammals, the state transitions defining sleep and wake bout durations have been described with exponential and power law models, respectively. However, sleep-wake stage distributions are often complex, and distinguishing between exponential and power law processes is not always straightforward. Although mono-exponential distributions are distinct from power law distributions, multi-exponenti

SUBMITTER: Chu-Shore J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2996311 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature