Carlos Schenck and Mark Mahowald will be remembered years from now for their remarkable contributions to sleep medicine. Rarely have individuals been able to typify a virtually unknown and uncharacterized but common disorder, convincingly understand its pathogenesis and develop an effective treatment. However, over the course of the last quarter of a century, that is precisely what Schenck and Mahowald have done. They have named it REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, beginning in 1986 with the description of their first patient, later realizing that the earlier work of Jouvet and others provided the pathological basis for the disorder and discovering the dramatic effect of clonazepam in its treatment. During that time they have also characterized and named other heretofore unknown para-somnias including status dissociatus.
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