OBJECTIVE To be the first to compare EEG power spectra during sleep onset REM periods (SOREMP) and sleep onset NREM periods (NREMP) in normal individuals and relate this to dream appearance processes underlying these different types of sleep periods. METHODS Eight healthy undergraduates spent 7 consecutive nights in the sleep lab including 4 nights for SOREMP elicitation using the Sleep Inter...

Ageing is associated with marked changes in sleep timing, structure and electroencephalographic (EEG) activity. Older people exhibit less slow-wave and spindle activity during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, together with attenuated levels of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep as compared to young individuals. However, the extent to which these age-related changes in sleep impact on dream proc...

Even under thermoneutral conditions, skin temperature fluctuates spontaneously, most prominently at distal parts of the body. These fluctuations were shown to be associated with fluctuations in vigilance: mild manipulation of skin temperature during nocturnal sleep affects sleep depth and the power spectral density of the electroencephalogram (EEG), and fluctuations in skin temperature during d...

We report four children with epilepsy with "continuous spike-waves during slow wave sleep" (CSWSS). The main clinical features were partial motor seizures, mental retardation and motor deficit. The EEG findings were characterized by nearly continuous (> 85%) diffuse slow spike and wave activity in two patients, and localized to one hemisphere in two other cases during non-REM sleep. The treatme...

OBJECTIVE Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep has a suppressing effect on epileptic activity. This effect might be directly related to neuronal desynchronization mediated by cholinergic neurotransmission. We investigated whether interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) and high frequency oscillations-a biomarker of the epileptogenic zone-are evenly distributed across phasic and tonic REM sleep. We ...

Sleep is a growing area of research interest in medicine and neuroscience. Actually, one major concern is to find a correlation between several physiologic variables and sleep stages. There is a scientific agreement on the characteristics of the five stages of human sleep, based on EEG analysis. Nevertheless, manual stage classification is still the most widely used approach. This work proposes...

Recent advances in electroencephalography (EEG) research are presented. Particular emphasis is placed on sleep and epilepsy research in humans. In this context, among others, studies on the modifications of EEG epileptic activity during sleep are discussed in more detail. A large number of reports come from EEG monitoring during presurgical evaluation and surgical treatment of drug-resistant ep...

PATIENTS WITH INSOMNIA OFTEN REPORT AWARENESS OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVITIES FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME WHILE LYING IN BED TRYING TO FALL asleep.1-3 They also tend to report that they are still awake even though polysomnographic recording indicates sound sleep status.4 Therefore, patients who complain of insomnia often overestimate their sleep-onset latency and underestimate theirtotal sleep t...

The aim of this study was to arrange an automatic quantitative measure of the electroencephalographic (EEG) signal amplitude variability during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, correlated with the visually extracted cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) parameters. Ninety-eight polysomnographic EEG recordings of normal controls were used. A new algorithm based on the analysis of the EEG amplitud...

The interaction of a gamma-aminobutyric acid-A (GABAA) receptor agonist and a benzodiazepine-type modulator of GABAA receptors on sleep was investigated. Low doses of muscimol (0.3 mg/kg) and the benzodiazepine midazolam (1.5 mg/kg) were administered alone and in combination, in random order, to eight rats. All injections were given intraperitoneally at light onset. Electroencephalogram (EEG) a...