physiological and pathological processes.
Significance Statement: Thalamo-cortical loops are associated with sensory processing, memory formation, executive functions, many of which are tightly related with sleep state-dependent neural oscillations, such as sleep spindles. It was proposed that sleep-related epileptic transformation of normal neurological networks interfere with sleep-related synaptic homeostasis, neural plasticity, and cognitive functioning. We had a unique opportunity to investigate the association between thalamic sleep spindles and ripples, and their associations with intellectual ability within two higher-order thalamic nuclei in human subjects, the anterior thalamic and mediodorsal thalamic nuclei.