ArticleBrain : a journal of neurology2024
Thalamic epileptic spikes disrupt sleep spindles in patients with epileptic encephalopathy.
Article in Brain : a journal of neurology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 26 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sleep spindle deficits in childhood absence epilepsy improve with antiseizure treatment and disease resolution.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Developmental and/or epileptic encephalopathy with spike-and-wave activation in sleep: Pathophysiological insights and treatment options.Epilepsia · 2026Review
- Developmental and/or Epileptic Encephalopathy with Spike-Wave Activation in Sleep: From Thalamocortical Mechanisms to Precision Therapy.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Thalamic interictal epileptic and non-epileptic events during NREM sleep in patients with focal epilepsy: a Stereo-EEG study.EBioMedicine · 2026Article
- Prognostic Implications of Sleep Architecture for Patients Admitted to the Intensive Care Unit With Status Epilepticus.Annals of clinical and translational neurology · 2026Article
- Auditory-evoked changes in slow oscillations and spindles correlate with memory consolidation in children with epilepsy and controls.Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2026Article
- Distinct Spectral and Directional Thalamocortical Network Dynamics Define Focal Seizure Evolution.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Hippocampal interictal discharges induce frontal spindles and enhance spindle-slow oscillation coupling in temporal lobe epilepsy.Clinical neurophysiology practice · 2026Article
- Prediction of cognitive impairment in epilepsy with spike-and-wave activation in sleep based on EEG.Therapeutic advances in neurological disorders · 2026Article
- Rebuilding the Tower of Babel: The Current Landscape and Emerging Opportunities in DEE-SWAS.Epilepsy currents · 2025Review
- Developmental and epileptic encephalopathy with spike-wave activation in sleep: From the 'functional ablation' model to a neurodevelopmental network perspective.Developmental medicine and child neurology · 2025Review
- Review
- Thalamic engagement by epileptic spikes as a mechanism for widespread slow oscillation-spindle decoupling.Epilepsia · 2025Article
- Fast ripple band high-frequency activity associated with thalamic sleep spindles in pediatric epilepsy.Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2025Article
- Critical dynamics predicts cognitive performance and provides a common framework for heterogeneous mechanisms impacting cognition.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Mechanistic insights into the interaction between epilepsy and sleep.Nature reviews. Neurology · 2025Review
- Epilepsy syndromes classification.Epilepsia open · 2025Article
- Timing is everything: The effect of early-life seizures on developing neuronal circuits subserving spatial memory.Epilepsia open · 2025Review
- Efficacy of propofol and midazolam combination in managing refractory epileptic encephalopathy with spike-wave activation in sleep.Epilepsy & behavior reports · 2025Article
- The Bidirectional Relationship Between Epilepsy and Alzheimer's Disease.Current neurology and neuroscience reports · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
In severe epileptic encephalopathies, epileptic activity contributes to progressive cognitive dysfunction. Epileptic encephalopathies share the trait of spike-wave activation during non-REM sleep (EE-SWAS), a sleep stage dominated by sleep spindles, which are brain oscillations known to coordinate offline memory consolidation. Epileptic activity has been proposed to hijack the circuits driving these thalamocortical oscillations, thereby contributing to cognitive impairment. Using a unique dataset of simultaneous human thalamic and cortical recordings in subjects with and without EE-SWAS, we provide evidence for epileptic spike interference of thalamic sleep spindle production in patients with EE-SWAS. First, we show that epileptic spikes and sleep spindles are both predicted by slow oscillations during stage two sleep (N2), but at different phases of the slow oscillation. Next, we demonstrate that sleep-activated cortical epileptic spikes propagate to the thalamus (thalamic spike rate increases after a cortical spike, P ≈ 0). We then show that epileptic spikes in the thalamus increase the thalamic spindle refractory period (P ≈ 0). Finally, we show that in three patients with EE-SWAS, there is a downregulation of sleep spindles for 30 s after each thalamic spike (P < 0.01). These direct human thalamocortical observations support a proposed mechanism for epileptiform activity to impact cognitive function, wherein epileptic spikes inhibit thalamic sleep spindles in epileptic encephalopathy with spike and wave activation during sleep.
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