Article Published by Yale News
In temporal lobe epilepsy — a common and debilitating form of the disorder — seizures often cause those affected to lose consciousness. In a new study, researchers at Yale University developed a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy in which seizures could be triggered in the same area of the brain as they occur in humans with the disorder. They found that, after a seizure was triggered, the behavior of some mice trained to do certain tasks was reduced. They also saw that when seizures were triggered in the mice, brain activity in an area called the cortex resembled that of deep sleep.
In people and in the mouse model, not every seizure leads to loss of consciousness or behavioral effects. In comparing the instances where seizures changed mouse behavior with those that didn’t, the researchers found that activity in the cortex more closely resembled a sleep state when seizures impaired behavior. “What this suggests is that, while these seizures are occurring in the temporal lobe, they are also shutting off circuits deep in the brain responsible for keeping us awake,” said Dr. Hal Blumenfeld, Professor of Neurology at Yale School of Medicine. “This gives us hope that if we can understand what causes loss of consciousness in temporal lobe seizures, then we can come up with treatments that prevent that loss and reduce some of the burden of this disorder.”