ABAlex C. Bender

Alex C. Bender

*This is an algorithmically generated author record based on publicly available information.

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Alex C. Bender has a total of 6 co-authors. Here are the top co-authors by number of shared publications:


Latest Publications

  • Altered Sleep Microarchitecture and Cognitive Impairment in Patients With Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

    by Alex C. Bender, Afareen Jaleel, Kyle R. Pellerin, Sebastian Moguilner, Rani A. Sarkis, Sydney S. Cash, Alice D. Lam

    Objectives: To investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics of sleep waveforms in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and examine their association with cognition. Methods: In this retrospective, cross-sectional study, we examined overnight EEG data from adult patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and non-epilepsy comparisons (NEC) admitted to the epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU) at Mass General Brigham hospitals. Automated algorithms were used to characterize sleep macro-architecture (sleep stages), and micro-architecture (spindles, slow oscillations) on scalp EEG, and to detect hippocampal interictal epileptiform discharges (hIEDs) from foramen ovale (FO) electrodes simultaneously recorded in a subset of TLE patients. We examined the association of sleep features and hIEDs with memory and executive function from clinical neuropsychological evaluations. Results: A total of 81 TLE and 28 NEC adult patients were included with similar mean ages. There were no significant differences in sleep macro-architecture between groups, including relative time spent in each sleep stage, sleep efficiency, and sleep fragmentation. In contrast, the spatiotemporal characteristics of sleep micro-architecture were altered in TLE compared to NEC and were associated with cognitive impairments. Specifically, we observed a ∼30% reduction in spindle density in TLE compared to NEC patients, which was significantly associated with worse memory performance. Spindle-slow oscillation (SO) coupling strength was also reduced in TLE and, in contrast to spindles, was associated with diminished executive function. We found no significant association between sleep macro- and micro-architectural parameters and hIEDs. Conclusion: There is a fundamental alteration of sleep micro-architecture in TLE, characterized by a reduction in spindle density and spindle-SO coupling, and these changes may contribute to neurocognitive comorbidity in this disorder.