Probing for cortical excitability

Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2011:2011:1644-7. doi: 10.1109/IEMBS.2011.6090474.

Abstract

This paper introduces a new method for measuring cortical excitability using an electrical probing stimulus via intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG). Stimuli consisted of 100 single bi-phasic pulses, delivered every 10 minutes. Neural excitability is estimated by extracting a feature from the iEEG responses to the stimuli, which we dub the mean phase variance (PV). We show that the mean PV increases with the rate of inter-ictal discharges in one patient. In another patient, we show that the mean PV changes with sleep and an epileptic seizure. The results demonstrate a proof-of-principal for the method to be applied in a seizure anticipation framework.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Cerebral Cortex / physiopathology*
  • Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Electric Stimulation / methods*
  • Electroencephalography / methods*
  • Epilepsy / diagnosis*
  • Epilepsy / physiopathology*
  • Humans
  • Nerve Net / physiopathology*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity