Abstract
Changes in brain activity can entrain cerebrovascular dynamics, though this has not been extensively investigated in pathophysiology. We assessed whether pathological network activation (i.e. seizures) in the Genetic Absence Epilepsy Rat from Strasbourg (GAERS) could alter dynamic fluctuations in local oxygenation. Spontaneous absence seizures in an epileptic rat model robustly resulted in brief dips in cortical oxygenation and increased spectral oxygen power at frequencies greater than 0.08 Hz. Filtering oxygen data for these fast dynamics was sufficient to distinguish epileptic vs. non-epileptic rats. Furthermore, this approach distinguished brain regions with seizures from seizure-free brain regions in the epileptic rat strain. We suggest that fast oxygen dynamics may be a useful biomarker for seizure network identification and could be translated to commonly used clinical tools that measure cerebral hemodynamics.
Highlights
Clinical tools to measure brain metabolism and blood flow are often used to identify abnormal changes in brain networksacross many disorders and diseases, including epilepsy, where a key goal is to identify the extent of the seizure-onset zone for potential surgical resection[1]
Since absence seizures were free of severe and long-lasting postictal hypoxia, which could be elicited by induced focal seizures (Fig. 1c)[9,10], this is an ideal model to study oxygen dynamics associated with brief, hypersynchronous network events
No seizures were observed in the non-epileptic control (NEC) strain (Fig. 2b) and no oxygen changes were observed at randomly chosen times (Fig. 2e)
Summary
Clinical tools to measure brain metabolism and blood flow are often used to identify abnormal changes in brain networksacross many disorders and diseases, including epilepsy, where a key goal is to identify the extent of the seizure-onset zone for potential surgical resection[1]. Analysis of these data generally provides a snapshot of a single time point (interictal, ictal, or postictal scans) and can be costly[2] and of limited insight without combining other diagnostic resources[3,4,5]. In light of recent evidence indicating that oscillations in cerebrovascular dynamics are entrained with local field potential (LFP)[6], we reasoned that pathophysiological changes in LFP (i.e. seizures) could perturb ongoing oxygen dynamics and serve as a potential biomarker
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