Sleep Study update

Sleep Study update

Sam Bramich and the wider ISLAND Sleep Study team have worked on finding new cases of isolated REM sleep behaviour disorder (or iRBD) in Tasmania. iRBD is a sleep disorder where people often act out their dreams and it can be an early symptom of neurodegenerative disease.

This work has led to a number of published papers, as well as funded presentations - in Singapore at the 2025 World Sleep Society Congress, and in the USA at the 2026 World Parkinson’s Congress. It has also allowed us to focus brain health strategies for this ‘at risk’ group to try and reduce risk of future conditions such as Dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson’s. To do this we have pointed participants towards the Preventing Dementia Massive Open Online Course and offered follow up assessments in the ISLAND Clinic.

One of the recent papers describes the results of our new TASLON (Tasmania London) protocol and this method - which bypasses the need for specialist sleep laboratory tests and keeps all the tests home based. This TASLON method is now being adopted in several countries who have the same challenges as Tasmania - these include Nigeria, Spain, UK and USA.

By building up the cohort of iRBD cases, and bringing together the ISLAND study with the Tasmania Parkinson’s Project, we have attracted new funding from Michael J Fox Foundation for blood biomarker collections in 2026.