Understanding Sleep Seizures: Types, Symptoms & Diagnosis

Many people with epilepsy experience increased seizure activity during sleep or soon after waking up. Like waking seizures, seizures that occur during sleep can manifest in a variety of forms. Only an electroencephalogram (EEG) can definitively diagnose a sleep seizure.

Similar Conditions

• Night terrors, restless leg syndrome, benign myoclonus, sleepwalking and sleep paralysis may all resemble sleep seizures, but they are non-epileptic conditions and do not usually require treatment unless they are frequent.

Myoclonic Seizures

• Many people with myoclonic epilepsy experience increased seizure activity during sleep. Myoclonic sleep seizures are sudden muscle jerks, which may be single or repetitive.

Awakening Grand Mal Seizures

• Grand mal, or tonic-clonic, seizures may occur more often, or even exclusively, when the person is waking up. These seizures involve loss of consciousness and generalized convulsions.

Benign Rolandic Seizures

• Some children experience benign rolandic seizures, defined by jerking of muscles on a single side of the body. These occur only during sleep and are always outgrown, so they rarely require treatment.

Frontal Lobe Sleep Seizures

• It is not uncommon for people with frontal lobe epilepsy to experience seizures more often during sleep, especially soon after falling asleep. These partial seizures can be mild or severe and involve only one portion of the brain.