May nanoTalks: Brainwaves during sleep

Talk 1: Auditory stimulation during sleep – a pilot study with children with epilepsy

Presented by Dr. Sara Fattinger; Postdoc at the Department of Neurology, University Hospital Zurich

During the last few years, a novel tool to interact with brain waves during deep sleep has been emerged: phase-targeting auditory stimulation. Thereby, short non-arousing tones are presented to slow waves, the typical electrophysiological brain waves during deep sleep. In some types of epilepsy pathological epileptic activity seems to be related to these sleep slow waves. Thus, such phase-targeting auditory stimulation during sleep may represent a novel non-pharmacological approach to reduce epileptic activity. In this nanoTalk the results of our pilot study will be presented. For the first time, we applied phase-targeting auditory stimulation during sleep in five children with epilepsy.

Talk 2: Electromagnetic field effects of mobile communication on sleep

Presented by Corinne Eicher; MD-PhD Candidate at the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Zurich

Worldwide, more than 8 billion mobile cellular devices have been subscribed in 2019 according to the International Telecommunication Union and numbers are increasing every year. During mobile communication, our body is exposed to electromagnetic fields in the radio frequency range. The most frequent complaints that people associate with this exposition are headaches and sleep disturbances. Whereas long-term consequences are largely unknown, reproducible acute effects on brainwaves in waking and sleep have been observed. How these studies are performed and why they need to be replicated for upcoming global wireless standards will be topics of this nanoTalk.