The thalamus, also known as the gate to consciousness, controls whether signals from the sensory periphery (with the exception of signals from the olfactory bulb) are transmitted to the cortex. During sleep this gate is metaphorically speaking closed and only very strong signals can pass it anymore. Associated EEG recordings show high amplitudes in a low frequency range, which have been revealed to reflect a thalamo-cortically synchronized burst firing. On the other hand this day-to-day synchronism can also lead to absence epileptic seizures, a non-convulsive epilepsy form that mostly affects juveniles. Although the seizure-mediated and sleep-related unconsciousness looks similar from an external point of view, they can be clearly distinguished by EEG recordings showing typical sleep spindles and so-called spike-and-wave discharges respectively.

Interested in more details we used computer modeling to address especially those questions that can be hardly answered experimentally. This includes a lot of systemic questions dealing e.g. with the development or prerequisites of thalamo-cortical synchronism but also questions focusing on treatment approaches by selective blockade of ion channels or desynchronizing network stimuli. The network model was developed and simulated using NEURON, a reliable, speed-optimized and well accepted simulation environment.