Abstract
A 10-year-old girl with multiple stressors had concomitant spells from sleep where she would appear to awaken screaming after which she would quickly fall back to sleep [1]. Overnight continuous video-electroencephalographic (EEG) monitoring captured 40 stereotypical spells of fearful arousals where she would call for her father, after which she would quickly fall asleep (39 from stage N2 sleep, 1 from stage R sleep). EEG abnormalities were only recognized during one event with rhythmic, right frontal theta epileptiform activity, and another episode that was followed by right hemispheric delta slow wave post-ictal activity (Figs. 1 and 2; Video 1). The clinical observations and EEG findings suggested nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy (NFLE).
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References
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Rhythmic theta activity from the right frontal region occurs immediately prior to the patient’s sudden frightened “awakening” as she yells for “Daddy” and is followed by her crouching on hands and knees while clutching her father. (MP4 9298 kb)
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Dyken, M.E., Dyken, M.R. (2023). Nocturnal Frontal Lobe Epilepsy. In: Thomas, R.J., Bhat, S., Chokroverty, S. (eds) Atlas of Sleep Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34625-5_50
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34625-5_50
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