APPM + CS PostDoc Seminar - Tahra Eissa

Seizures are defined as sudden, abnormal electrical disturbances in the brain. Patients diagnosed with epilepsy have chronic, recurrent seizures and often require clinical intervention to prevent these episodes. Unfortunately, a large portion of epilepsy patients do not respond to current treatment options, in part due to a lack of understanding on how seizures develop in the brain. This talk will discuss some of the complex dynamics associated with seizure activity and how these dynamics can educate epilepsy treatment. Using a combination of human electrical recordings, biological experiments and computational modeling, we studied the dynamics of seizures at various spatial scales, ranging from a single neuron up to large neuronal networks (centimeter scale). At each scale, we analyzed the interactions between the seizure-producing neurons and the surrounding tissue to determine how the interactions can define a seizure's trajectory and the activity observed clinically. The findings were then used to identify representative electrical markers that could be applied to clinical treatment.