Thalamocortical Assemblies: Sleep Spindles, Slow Waves and Epileptic Discharges

During sleep, the mammalian brain generates an orderly progression of low frequency oscillations as the brain moves from sleep onset into deep sleep. This book explores the underlying neural mechanisms involved in generating these oscillations through interacting neural assemblies in the thalamus and the cortex. Sleep spindles are involved in the consolidation of experiences in long-term memory during sleep.

Written by two leading experts in the field, this book integrates the properties of ion channels, synaptic interactions, and intrinsic cellular mechanisms into biophysical models of neural oscillations in local circuits and distributed networks. In particular, the book focuses on sleep spindles and how they are highjacked by epileptic seizures

Reissued in paperback after being unavailable for many years, this revised edition of Thalamocortical Assemblies includes updates to each chapter, highlighting developments since its first publication. The book will be valuable to neuroscientists, neurobiologists, physiologists and computational researchers interested in sleep and memory processes.