Low electrical brain activity causes some epileptics to have seizures

Main Category: Sleep / Sleep Disorders / Insomnia
Article Date: 28 Mar 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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According to experts, if you are epileptic and there are low levels of electrical activity in your brain you are more likely to have a seizure.

The scientists did tests on 16 people. 14 were epileptic and two were not.

They noticed that while asleep the people with epilepsy had significantly slowed activity in the outer part of the brain than the non-epileptic people.

This could explain why many people with epilepsy have their seizures after they have fallen asleep.

You can read about this study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

We have known that sleep can trigger epileptic fits. There have been lots of theories as to why, but no one was sure. Some studies in the past have suggested it may have something to do with electrical activity in the brain, but not conclusively. They were using conventional machines which were unable to detect slow brain waves.

In this new study, the scientists used a highly sensitive EEG (electroencephalography) machine to pick up the waves (they developed it themselves). The scientists are from theUniversity of Helsinki, Finland, and the University of Washington, USA.

The tests lasted nine days and were carried out on 16 volunteers. The scientists tested them while they were asleep.

With the epileptic people only, they found that brain activity slowed significantly during sleep. This was immediately followed by intense bursts of brain activity - called interictal epileptic events.

The scientists said that their findings may lead the way to new treatments for people with epilepsy. They also said further research is needed.

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