Neurology · 1977 · 130 citations · 0 references
EEG recordings were obtained from 120 healthy volunteers after 24 hours of sleep deprivation. Small, monophasic or diphasic spikes appeared in 24 % of volunteers and 20 % of patients during stages 1–2 NREM sleep, mainly in anteromesial temporal regions, yet these normal epileptiform transients have no diagnostic value for seizure evaluation.
Electroencephalograms were performed on 120 normal subjects sleep deprived for 24 hours. Twenty-four percent of the volunteers exhibited one or <i>more</i> epileptiform transients during stages 1 or 2 of non-rapid eye movement sleep. These potentials usually appeared as monophasic or diphasic spikes unaccompanied by sharp waves or focal slowing. When abundant, they occurred sporadically and independently over both hemispheres but were best developed in the anteromesial temporal regions. A 20 percent incidence of similar spikes was found in 599 consecutively referred patients recorded under the same conditions. We conclude that these epileptiform transients of sleep, which have been called "small sharp spikes," are normal and are of <i>no</i> diagnostic <i>value in the</i> evaluation of patients with seizures.