Development of Seizure Monitoring and Control Systems for Epileptic Animal Models

Abstract

The worldwide prevalence of epilepsy is approximately 1%, and 25% of epilepsy patients cannot be treated sufficiently by any available therapy. Recently, alternative techniques, such as vagus nerve stimulation and deep brain stimulation have been proposed for open-loop seizure control. However, the efficacy of intermittent stimulation may decrease due to neuron acclimation. A closedloop device is more likely to achieve seizure control than an open-loop seizure controller. The objectives of this study are first to develop various epileptic rat models, second to develop a portable wireless closed-loop seizure controller including online seizure detection and real-time electrical stimulation for seizure elimination, and third to apply the developed seizure controller to the animal models to perform on-line seizure elimination. Three epileptic rat models including Long-Evans rats with spontaneous absence epilepsy, pentylenetetrazol (PTZ)-induced convulsive seizure, and temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) induced by amygdala kindling were successfully developed. A wireless brain-behavior monitoring system that can acquire electroencephalography (EEG) and accelerometer signals simultaneously was designed and it demonstrates successful observation of kindling process and reduces the wire artifacts of EEG signals during convulsions. A portable seizure controller consists of the neural interface with EEG acquisition and electrical stimulation, and on-chip seizure detection was developed. All of the components have been further integrated in the chip-on-board and system-on-chip platform.