Home Department: Computer Science
Mentors: Fiona Baumer (Neurology - Pediatric Neurology) and Andrea Goldstein-Piekarski (Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences)

"Evaluating Competition Between Interictal Epileptiform Discharges and Sleep Microarchitecture in Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome"

Sleep disturbances are frequently reported in epilepsy, one of the most common neurological disorders. Abnormal electrophysiological events, known as interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs), may disrupt sleep microarchitecture crucial for memory consolidation and brain development. Vienna’s project focuses on IEDs in Lennox–Gastaut syndrome (LGS), a form of pediatric epilepsy characterized by diffuse network dysfunction. Vienna will collect overnight EEG recordings from LGS patients and analyze the spatiotemporal occurrence of IEDs relative to key sleep patterns. Investigating how these pathological discharges interact with normal sleep features can improve understanding of sleep physiology in epilepsy and guide future targeted neuromodulation therapies.