[Somatosensory evoked potentials and their interhemispheric asymmetry during different stages of nocturnal sleep in healthy subjects and epilepsy]

Abstract

Somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) were studied in the state of wakefulness and in different phases of night sleep in healthy people and in epileptics. In the slow sleep the latencies of SEP components became longer, beginning from the P44. In the rapid sleep, increase of asymmetry of early components and sharp decrease of the amplitude of late SEP components take place. In epileptics these changes are more prominent. The obtained data show that functional states in the cycle sleep-wakefulness are characterized by different excitability, different characters of information processing and interhemispheric relations.