Assessing criticality in pre-seizure single-neuron activity of human epileptic cortex.

ABSTRACT: Epileptic seizures are characterized by abnormal and excessive neural activity, where cortical network dynamics seem to become unstable. However, most of the time, during seizure-free periods, cortex of epilepsy patients shows perfectly stable dynamics. This raises the question of how recurring instability can arise in the light of this stable default state. In this work, we examine two potential scenarios of seizure generation: (i) epileptic cortical areas might generally operate closer to instability, which would make epilepsy patients generally more susceptible to seizures, or (ii) epileptic cortical areas might drift systematically towards instability before seizure onset. We analyzed single-unit spike recordings from both the epileptogenic (focal) and the nonfocal cortical hemispheres

SUBMITTER: Hagemann A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7971851 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature