The brain activity of people with epilepsy shows that their exhausted brains never really get the rest they need, setting them up for problems with thinking and attention during the day.

University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health research shows a reinforcing circuit that deprives people with epilepsy of restful sleep. Seizures exhaust the brain, but the brain regions where the seizures originate continue to send off abnormal activity during the night. As a result, the brains never get the reset that sleep normally affords.

“What we saw was that epilepsy patients had re...