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Query: UMLS:C0149958 (complex partial seizures)
 2,563 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Seizure patients often complain of sleepiness or disturbed sleep. Although susceptible of medication effect, the multiple sleep latency test (MSLT) may quantify daytime sleepiness and help to establish whether qualitative sleep disturbance accompanies epilepsy. In order to measure daytime sleepiness in epilepsy patients, 30 patients with newly diagnosed or presently untreated complex partial seizures had MSLT after an overnight sleep EEG that showed no sleep deprivation or nocturnal seizures. Four 20-minute naps were undertaken at 09:00, 11:00, 13:00, and 15:00, and sleep latency was recorded along with 8 channels of EEG. Twenty of 30 seizure patients reported subjective sleepiness. Eight patients had average sleep latencies less than 8 minutes, and 3 had latencies less than 5 minutes. No sleep onset REM or respiratory disturbance was noted. Twenty-five patients had EEG abnormalities but none had ictal seizures. Right temporal epileptiform activity correlated with sleepiness. MSLT may quantify sleepiness in epilepsy patients, which is common but may be subjective or psychophysiological. Some patients with partial seizures have persistent daytime sleepiness independent of medication, possibly related to residual medication effects or non-specific effect of their epileptogenic foci.
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PMID:Multiple sleep latency tests in epilepsy. 819 89

The main interest in the association between sleep and temporal lobe dysfunction is based on the activation of ictal and interictal epileptic phenomena. The clinical semiology of NREM and REM parasomnias may resemble complex partial seizures. The differentiation between epilepsy and dissociated states of wakefulness and sleep is of high diagnostic and therapeutic importance. Systems within temporal lobe structures are also responsible for disturbed sleep or dyssomnia. The limbic brain is connected with different nodal points in the network underlying sleep organisation and participates in both sleepinducing and arousal mechanisms. Experimental amygdala kindling, an animal epilepsy model involving temporal structures, induces disturbed sleep patterns favouring waking and light sleep. In epilepsy unstable disrupted and superficial sleep patterns prevail without overt seizures. Sleep-fragmentation and deprivation may impair daytime functioning and cognitive performance by lowering the seizure-threshold. The recognition of dyssomnia and of excessive sleepfragmentation and sleepiness has obvious implications for behavioural and drug treatment.
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PMID:Sleep and the temporal lobe. 866 24

Temporal lobe epilepsy is a partial epileptic disorder in which mesial structures are responsible for the principal ictal symptoms. Its characteristic feature is the recurrence of simple and complex partial seizures, associated with postictal confusion and amnesia of the event. The facilitating effect of NREM sleep on the propagation of the seizure, as well as the sleep abnormalities provoked by epilepsy were evident in our two patients. Yawning is a physiological reflex induced by arousal and drowsiness and may appear in different neurological conditions. Its relation with epilepsy of limbic origin has been rarely reported. We describe in a 95 year old male patient, the occurrence of yawning followed by complex partial seizure during a state of drowsiness. His EEG showed independent bilateral interictal foci of temporal sharp waves and after being medicated with carbamazepine 400 mg/day, the episode did not recur. Another patient, a 17 year old female, displayed complex partial seizures and secondarily generalized seizures with yawning during the posictal period, after naps. The EEG was normal and her polysomnography showed bilateral synchronous temporal spikes and slow waves with secondarily generalization during stage 2 of NREM sleep that produce paroxysmal microarousals and increased stages 1 and 2 of NREM sleep and REM sleep diminished. After being medicated with divalproex sodium 750 mg/day, she suffered no further seizures. Temporal lobe epilepsy, sleep-wake cycles and yawning seem not only to share the same anatomic structures but also the same neurochemical mechanisms. The fact that endogenous opiods are considered as part of a protective system that stop and prevent seizures may allow us to postulate that yawning would be the expression of the endogenous opiods induced mechanisms that stop and prevent the recurrence of the temporal lobe epilepsy. Another hypothesis may be that this is only a particular form of temporal lobe epilepsy.
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PMID:[Yawning and temporal lobe epilepsy]. 1279 82

This study examined the effectiveness of the cognitive processes underlying dreaming in patients with complex partial seizures (CPS), by assessing the frequency of recall and the structural organization of dreams reported after awakenings provoked alternately during REM and stage 2 NREM sleep on 12 cognitively unimpaired CPS-patients (six with epileptic focus in the right hemisphere and six in the left one). Each patient was recorded for three consecutive nights, respectively, for adaptation to the sleep laboratory context, for polysomnography and for dream collection. The frequency of dream recall was lower after stage 2 NREM sleep than REM sleep, regardless of the side of epileptic focus, while the length and structural organization of dreams did not significantly differ in REM and NREM sleep. However, the length of story-like dreams was influenced by global cognitive functioning during REM sleep. These findings indicate that in CPSs-patients the elaboration of dream experience is maintained in both REM and NREM sleep, while the access to information for conversion into dream contents and the consolidation of dream contents is much less effective during NREM rather than during REM sleep. Further studies may distinguish between these two possibilities and enlighten us as to whether the impaired memory functioning during NREM sleep is a side effect of anticonvulsant treatment.
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PMID:Dream experience during REM and NREM sleep of patients with complex partial seizures. 1524 68

Different pathological conditions may lead to somnambulic automatisms arising from nocturnal sleep. Video polysomnography represents the diagnostic tool but, due to the difficulty of capturing complex episodes in the sleep laboratory, audio-video recordings at home of the episodes may help in the differential diagnosis also. Sleepwalking is a disorder of arousal in which the subject arises from deep sleep, even displaying long complex behaviour, including leaving the bed and walking, with memory impairment of the event. Disordered arousal mechanisms with an inability of the brain to fully awaken from slow-wave sleep are thought to lead to these motor automatisms. REM sleep behaviour disorders begin during REM sleep and are accompanied by features of REM sleep. The motor behaviour may be violent and injurious to the patient and/or bed partner. In some patients, however, the behaviour may be similar to that observed in sleepwalking and some patients have an overlap syndrome. In nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy in particular, and in complex partial seizures in general, stereotypic and repetitive motor attacks may recur, at any time, on the same night and on different nights, with a continuum between minimal or minor attacks and major or prolonged episodes up to agitated epileptic nocturnal wanderings.
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PMID:Sleepwalking and other ambulatory behaviours during sleep. 1633 95

Consciousness is a state so essentially entwined with human experience, yet so difficult to conceptually define and measure. In this article, we explore how a bidimensional model of consciousness involving both level of arousal and subjective awareness of the contents of consciousness can be used to differentiate a range of healthy and altered conscious states. These include the different sleep stages of healthy individuals and the altered states of consciousness associated with neurological conditions such as epilepsy, vegetative state and coma. In particular, we discuss how arousal and awareness are positively correlated in normal physiological states with the exception of REM sleep, while a disturbance in this relationship is characteristic of vegetative state, minimally conscious state, complex partial seizures and sleepwalking.
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PMID:Consciousness: a neurological perspective. 2144 4


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