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Spindling, Incremental Thalamocortical Responses, and Spike-Wave Epilepsy

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Generalized Epilepsy

Abstract

There is accumulating evidence that generalized seizures with absence or petit mal attacks, characterized by 3-Hz, high-voltage EEG complexes of the spike-wave (SW) type, are dependent upon a decreased level of vigilance in humans and animals. Four main lines of clinical and experimental data support this idea. (1) In humans, SW activity is not randomly distributed over the sleep-waking cycle but rather demonstrates a time-ordered relationship between an increased number of SW discharges and the spindle stage of slow-wave sleep, whereas an abrupt attenuation of SW activity occurs upon awakening (Kellaway, 1985). (2) In the feline generalized epilepsy model (Prince and Farrell, 1963), spindle oscillations, an electrographic landmark of sleep onset, develop into bilaterally synchronous SW complexes and concomitant behavioral unresponsiveness, as seen in human petit mal attacks (Kostopoulos et al., 1981; McLachlan et al., 1984; Gloor and Fariello, 1988). (3) Self-sustained SW cortical activity follows protracted, single shock thalamic stimulation or thalamocortical incremental responses within the frequency range of spindle oscillations, during periods of drowsiness in chronically implanted monkeys (Steriade, 1974), and in the encéphale isolé cat (Steriade and Yossif, 1984). (4) An increase in the level of vigilance is effective in blocking SWs, since it disrupts EEG spindle rhythms. Indeed, the SWs of epileptic patients may be arrested by alerting stimuli (Li et al., 1952), and stimulation of the midbrain reticular core obliterates the SW-like cortical potentials evoked by low-frequency stimuli to thalamic intralaminar nuclei (Pollen et al., 1963).

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Authors
  1. M. Steriade
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Montreal Neurological Institute, Department of Neurophysiology, McGill University, H3A 2B4, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Massimo Avoli M.D., Ph.D.  & Pierre Gloor Ph.D.  & 

  2. Department of Physiology, University of Patras Medical School, 261 10, Patras, Greece

    George Kostopoulos M.D., Ph.D.

  3. Laboratoire de Physiologie Nerveuse, CNRS, F-91198, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Robert Naquet M.D.

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Steriade, M. (1990). Spindling, Incremental Thalamocortical Responses, and Spike-Wave Epilepsy. In: Avoli, M., Gloor, P., Kostopoulos, G., Naquet, R. (eds) Generalized Epilepsy. Birkhäuser Boston. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-6767-3_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-6767-3_12

  • Publisher Name: Birkhäuser Boston

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4684-6767-3

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