Brain waves usually found in sleep can protect against epileptic activity | Hacker News Reader

Brain waves usually found in sleep can protect against epileptic activity

medicalxpress.com

100 pointswglb28 comments

I'm one of the lucky ones, as I grew out of my teenage years my brain changed and seizures stopped. You never stop looking over your should or thinking about it though, not at all.

One theory a doctor posed to me for why this could be happening (he'd seen it before), was simply down to neural pathways getting more set as you get older - the analogy he used was that a seizure is sort of like your brain short circuiting, so if it's less plastic that may make you less prone.

It's just ridiculous how adaptable the human brain is, I love reading about this stuff.

I'm lucky to never have had seizures but I had a constant muscular ticks when I was a teenager that mostly went away as I became an adult.

My experience is consistent with your theory of neural pathways getting set, with the exception that I still have get repetitive head ticks on multi-day periods of high anxiety. I completely believe that better and more consistent sleep as an adult (outside high-anxiety periods) also has a lot to do with it.

I have weird muscular ticks or tremors that are sudden and then stop generally over and over again in the same muscles - either the bicept or the calf - at times. I haven't figured out if it is related to stress or lack of sleep both of which I struggle with but I can say that it is pretty annoying. Sometimes I wonder if it is foreshadowing for something much less pleasant in the future.

Anecdotal but I have epilepsy and my memory has started decreasing since I started having seizures. Even now thoroughly medicated, I'll still have moments where I completely lose my train of thought, and have to rethink how I arrived there.

I’ve wondered if the memory issues are actually side effects of the medication. I spent 6 months on max dosage of one medication and memory was crap and ability to communicate with humans (vs computers for the day job) was greatly diminished. I’m now down to about half the dosage of that medication but we’ve added a small dose of a second medication and I’m remembering more and social interactions aren’t as stressful as they were.

I'm not on a ton of medication, but it's very possible. The drugs they put you on are varying kinds of brutal.

What about "difficulty recalling words"?

not parent but as someone with temporal lobe epilepsy, in addition to what parent describes, difficulty recalling words is definitely something i experience. Probably the most annoying thing that i have had to learn to deal with is people trying to fill in or guess what word i am trying to say while i pause. The hippocampus is located in the temporal lobe and is heavily involved in the processing and storage of short-term memory as well as retrieval of long-term memory, so it makes sense that if the hippocampus is a bit fried from seizures it would manifest as memory-related cognitive issues.

Yep 100%

That's a common side effect of lamictal/lamotrigine.

I'm curious if the ketogenic diet is regularly presented as a treatment option to those with epilepsy or is it primarily meds?

Primarily medication. Fasting has a long (ancient) history as a treatment for epilepsy, the modern revival and investigation of the ketogenic diet specifically relates to certain types drug-resistant childhood epilepsy. The Wikipedia article on the ketogenic diet is quite informative.

Quite interesting. So epileptic brains are re-using a mechanism from the sleep cycle to defend against daytime seizures [potentially].... But at a cost of cognitive ability. I like how the brain can adaptively rewire stuff to defend itself. Just an anecdote, I find that my epilepsy causes me to drastically fall off a cognitive cliff at a certain point during e.g. a long meeting, and I guess this is a kind of gentle defence mechanism which I tend to call an 'aura' or precursor to a seizure. I like that the brain can give you notice of such a thing, enabling you to escape a bad situation.

“aura” rings very true for me, I can feel it coming on 5-30 seconds before it hits hard.

I especially struggle, not necessarily to the point of seizure but at least increased brain activity, with social situations with too many inputs when I can’t decide which input to focus on.

I had nocturnal childhood epilepsy and, thankfully, I grew out of it.

I would have an “aura” before going to bed that I would be having a seizure that night.

Thankfully, I never had a daytime seizure.

i have the same troubles in social situations with too many inputs. i am quite frankly asocial because of it, though i don't necessarily want to be. do you mind if i ask what your reaction feels like? my reaction feels a lot like dissociation, but it also could be absence seizure. it is hard to introspect in those moments.

i recently had my first generalized seizure and once i knew and talked with doctors who confirmed it as primarily TLE i realized i had been having focal seizures for years.

i think i may have a similar feeling in long meetings/conversations too. it's like i am forced to stop paying attention for several seconds. i can generally even notice that i am not paying attention, but I am unable to focus even if i try. i think i've noticed it tends to be worse if there are lots of people talking. it feels a lot like dissociation. perhaps it is an 'aura', some sort of absence seizure...

Super interesting. We've been working on slow-wave enhancement over the last 3 years (increasing synchronous firing of neurons which are the slow-waves mentioned in the article).

We've only looked at doing this during sleep. I'll reach out to epilepsy researchers to see if there may be any benefit to our work in this space.

Or if anyone here knows more, please reach out. Email in profile.

Amazing how the brain itself has already countermeasures to deal with certain epileptic activity on its own.

What I am missing from the article is whether this provides some tangible opportunities for developing treatments or whether it is a finding that is more like a trivia, as in “hey look how cool the brain is!”

maybe neurofeedback? https://web.archive.org/web/20110710194522/www.epilepsyhealt...

wikipedia claims there is not much recent research when it references that link.

it is being shown that meditation can affect brain waves, I wonder if it is in a way that is beneficial for preventing seizures.

On a separate but related topic, I have heard that meditation can trigger/worsen epilepsy, but there is also counter evidence that it can reduce seizures. I find this link interesting - even if there is no definitive finding yet. Note: there are different types of meditation.

hi, as a meditator and epileptic my curiosity is piqued. When you say 'this link', did you mean OP or is there a link you meant to add to your comment? if the latter I would be keen to look at it.

Sort of related, but my epileptic dog has most of his seizures right as he's waking up. Perhaps he's suddenly losing his "protection" as his short waves are disabling.

Interesting, I have heard recently of someone who is most likely to have his seizures when he's waking up. I know little about the subject but now I wonder about the mechanisms that make this more likely...

I think there’s more to dig into here. Although it’s fairly well known that sleep (and lack of it) can trigger seizures on waking, there’s not much understanding of why. Recently a big breakthrough in SUDI research (“cot death”/“SIDS”) found low levels of BChE was a marker for unexplained infant deaths. This is significant particularly because the same marker is known to be linked to difficulties waking up from anaesthesia.

There is a very similar syndrome known as SUDEP (or Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy), where often people are found dead, face down in their beds.

It seems to me at least plausible that there are some links between this new discovery, SUDEP, and SUDI/SIDS.

Interesting. I believe those might be called silence seizures and if I’m not mistaken are prone to happen around the sleep cycles, so before or after one and are found at a fairly high rate in people with a Satb2 mutation, a gene known to be heavily involved in bone growth and cerebral cortex development.

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