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Time modulation of spike‐and‐wave activity in generalized epilepsy
Author(s) -
Kellaway Peter,
Frost James D.,
Crawley James W.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
annals of neurology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.764
H-Index - 296
eISSN - 1531-8249
pISSN - 0364-5134
DOI - 10.1002/ana.410080506
Subject(s) - ictal , spike and wave , ethosuximide , epilepsy , spike (software development) , modulation (music) , electroencephalography , medicine , physics , audiology , mathematics , neuroscience , psychology , anticonvulsant , acoustics , computer science , software engineering
Nineteen patients, aged 4 to 44 years, with generalized epilepsy and generalized 3 Hz spike‐and‐wave activity, were monitored for 24 or 36 hours on one to nine occasions to determine the time distribution of ictal and interictal electroencephalographic discharges and the consistency of the time patterns observed. Two patients with a low incidence of spike‐and‐wave activity had a random pattern of occurrence; the other 17 showed one of three types of time modulation. The latter can be explained by the interaction of two modulative processes, one with a period of about 100 minutes and the other of approximately 24 hours. The pattern observed depends on the phase angle of the two cyclic processes. Treatment with ethosuximide altered the pattern of time modulation, and eventually, when the spike‐and‐wave activity was reduced to a low level, the time distribution became random.