Abstract
The neuronal synchronous discharging may cause an epileptic seizure. Currently, most of the studies conducted to investigate the mechanism of epilepsy are based on EEGs or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recorded during the ictal discharging or the resting-state, and few studies have probed into the dynamic patterns during the inter-ictal discharging that are much easier to record in clinical applications. Here, we propose a time-varying network analysis based on adaptive directed transfer function to uncover the dynamic brain network patterns during the inter-ictal discharging. In addition, an algorithm based on the time-varying outflow of information derived from the network analysis is developed to detect the epileptogenic zone. The analysis performed revealed the time-varying network patterns during different stages of inter-ictal discharging; the epileptogenic zone was activated prior to the discharge onset then worked as the source to propagate the activity to other brain regions. Consistence between the epileptogenic zones detected by our proposed approach and the actual epileptogenic zones proved that time-varying network analysis could not only reveal the underlying neural mechanism of epilepsy, but also function as a useful tool in detecting the epileptogenic zone based on the EEGs in the inter-ictal discharging.
Highlights
Being a brain disease rather than a disorder, the neuronal synchronous discharging may cause an epileptic seizure (Fisher et al, 2014)
It is noteworthy that the EEG waveforms presented are stable at the early stage and approximately at the 3rd second, apart from the electrodes nearby the epileptogenic zones, other electrodes exhibit the characteristic peaks of inter-ictal discharging, which makes it difficult to localize the epileptogenic zone merely based on EEG waveforms
Notwithstanding, the time-varying network patterns of these Eps from different epileptogenic zones shown in Figure 2 have different network hub nodes location in the brain areas
Summary
Being a brain disease rather than a disorder, the neuronal synchronous discharging may cause an epileptic seizure (Fisher et al, 2014). Epileptic seizure is always accompanied by various clinical manifestations, such as loss of consciousness, movement dysfunction, and etc.(Cheung et al, 2006; Hommet et al, 2006; Malfait and Lippé, 2011; Blumenfeld, 2012). The clinical therapies including taking drugs and surgery have been widely considered to control epileptic seizure (Huang et al, 2017; Mula, 2017). Doctors always ask the patients to first try the antiepileptic drugs and later surgery is usually considered for the patients when the drugs become ineffective. Finding the accurate location of the epileptogenic zone is of great importance in the clinical therapy of epilepsy. Epileptogenic zone is defined as the area that accounts for the generation of clinical seizures in the cerebral cortex (Nadler and Spencer, 2014)
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