Thursday, November 12, 2026

3:45 PM - 5:15 PM

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Details

Isolated REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder (iRBD) is a key prodromal symptom of alpha-synuclein-related diseases – with ~80% of patients developing Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, or multiple system atrophy within 13 years of diagnosis. Yet its detection and characterisation remain methodologically challenging and many cases are missed. This symposium will focus on recent advances in the measurement and identification of iRBD across clinical and community settings. Presentations will address current practices and challenges in REM sleep without atonia (RSWA) scoring, highlighting issues of standardisation and reproducibility. Emerging approaches to community-based and remote detection of iRBD will be discussed, including new computational technologies. The session will explore novel biomarkers, including ocular measures as early indicators of disease, and Prof Raffaele Ferri will present work on neurophysiological biomarkers of RBD, focusing on quantitative polysomnographic markers such as REM sleep microstructure, together with the potential contribution of transcranial magnetic stimulation to elucidate motor-system excitability and the neural mechanisms underlying abnormal motor behaviours during REM sleep. Collectively, the symposium will emphasise scalable, biologically informed methods that can enhance early detection, phenotyping, and risk stratification of iRBD for both research and clinical applications.

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Speaker