Medication-refractory focal epilepsy poses a significant challenge, with approximately 30% of patients ineligible for surgery due to the involvement of eloquent cortex in the epileptogenic network. For such patients with limited surgical options, electrical neuromodulation represents a promising alternative therapy. In this study, we investigate the potential of non-invasive temporal interference (TI) electrical stimulation to reduce epileptic biomarkers in patients with epilepsy by comparing intracerebral recordings obtained before, during, and after TI stimulation, and to those recorded during low and high kHz frequency (HF) sham stimulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe piriform cortex is recognized as highly epileptogenic in rodents, yet its electrophysiological role in human epilepsy remains understudied. Recent surgical outcomes have suggested potential benefits in resecting the piriform cortex for cases of medial temporal lobe epilepsy. However, little is known about its electrophysiological activity in human epilepsy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLow power is a problem in many fields, as underpowered studies that find a statistically significant result will exaggerate the magnitude of the observed effect size. We quantified the statistical power and magnitude error of studies of epilepsy surgery outcomes. The median power across all studies was 14%.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe purpose of this study was to systematically examine three different surgical approaches in treating left medial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE) (viz., subtemporal selective amygdalohippocampectomy [subSAH], stereotactic laser amygdalohippocampotomy [SLAH], and anterior temporal lobectomy [ATL]), to determine which procedures are most favorable in terms of visual confrontation naming and seizure relief outcome. This was a retrospective study of 33 adults with intractable mTLE who underwent left temporal lobe surgery at three different epilepsy surgery centers who also underwent pre-, and at least 6-month post-surgical neuropsychological testing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe conventional intracarotid amobarbital (Wada) test has been used to assess memory function in patients being considered for temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) surgery. Minimally invasive approaches that target the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and spare neocortex are increasingly used, but a knowledge gap remains in how to assess memory and language risk from these procedures. We retrospectively compared results of two versions of the Wada test, the intracarotid artery (ICA-Wada) and posterior cerebral artery (PCA-Wada) approaches, with respect to predicting subsequent memory and language outcomes, particularly after stereotactic laser amygdalohippocampotomy (SLAH).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe effects of electromagnetic interference have been hiding in plain sight for millennia and are now being applied to the non-invasive stimulation of deep tissues. In the article by Missey et al., the effect of non-invasive stimulation of the hypoglossal nerve by an interference envelope of interfering carrier waves is examined in mice and participants with sleep apnea.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe experiences associated with remembering, including metamemory feelings about the act of remembering and attempts at remembering, are not often integrated into general accounts of memory. For example, David Rubin (2022) proposes a unified, three-dimensional conceptual space for mapping memory states, a map that does not systematically specify metamemory feelings. Drawing on Rubin's model, we define a distinct role for metamemory in relation to first-order memory content.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: With expanding neurosurgical options in epilepsy, it is important to characterise each options' risk for postoperative cognitive decline. Here, we characterise how patients' preoperative white matter (WM) networks relates to postoperative memory changes following different epilepsy surgeries.
Methods: Eighty-nine patients with temporal lobe epilepsy with T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted imaging as well as preoperative and postoperative verbal memory scores (prose recall) underwent either anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL: n=38) or stereotactic laser amygdalohippocampotomy (SLAH; n=51).
Episodic memory may essentially be memory for one's place within a temporally unfolding scene from a first-person perspective. Given this, pervasively used static stimuli may only capture one small part of episodic memory. A promising approach for advancing the study of episodic memory is immersing participants within varying scenes from a first-person perspective.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe piriform cortex (PC) is part of the olfactory system, principally receiving input from the lateral olfactory tract and projecting to downstream components of the olfactory network, including the amygdala. Based on preclinical studies, PC is vulnerable to injury and can be easily kindled as an onset site for seizures. While the role of PC in human epilepsy has been studied indirectly and the subject of speculation, cases of demonstrated PC seizure onset from direct intracranial recording are rare.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding the activity of the mammalian brain requires an integrative knowledge of circuits at distinct scales, ranging from ion channel gating to circuit connectomics. Computational models are regularly employed to understand how multiple parameters contribute synergistically to circuit behavior. However, traditional models of anatomically and biophysically realistic neurons are computationally demanding, especially when scaled to model local circuits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTemporal lobe epilepsy is associated with MRI findings reflecting underlying mesial temporal sclerosis. Identifying these MRI features is critical for the diagnosis and management of temporal lobe epilepsy. To date, this process relies on visual assessment by highly trained human experts (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudies of epilepsy surgery outcomes are often small and thus underpowered to reach statistically valid conclusions. We hypothesized that ordinal logistic regression would have greater statistical power than binary logistic regression when analyzing epilepsy surgery outcomes. We reviewed 10 manuscripts included in a recent meta-analysis which found that mesial temporal sclerosis (MTS) predicted better surgical outcomes after a stereotactic laser amygdalohippocampectomy (SLAH).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnilateral intrahippocampal injection of kainic acid is used as a model of medial temporal lobe epilepsy and provides a platform to study the mechanisms of epilepsy. Here, we used an AAV-9 EYFP-tagged viral vector as an anterograde tracer, injected into the dorsal and ventral hippocampus after kainic acid injection, to map out the efferent hippocampal projections after the development of spontaneous seizures in this model. The purpose of the study was to identify the extent of changes in hippocampal efferent system in several brain regions that receive significant inputs from the hippocampus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo evaluate declarative memory outcomes in medically refractory epilepsy patients who underwent either a highly selective laser ablation of the amygdalohippocampal complex or a conventional open temporal lobe resection. Post-operative change scores were examined for verbal memory outcome in epilepsy patients who underwent stereotactic laser amygdalohippocampotomy (SLAH: = 40) or open resection procedures ( = 40) using both reliable change index (RCI) scores and a 1-SD change metric. Using RCI scores, patients undergoing open resection (12/40, 30.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report a case study of a surgical candidate, a 51-year-old woman with left temporal lobe epilepsy, who failed a left injection intracarotid amobarbital procedure (e.g., Wada test), scoring 0 of 8 items.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRoughly two-thirds of all people report having experienced déjà vu-the odd feeling that a current experience is both novel and a repeat or replay of a previous, unrecalled experience. Reports of an association between déjà vu and seizure aura symptomatology have accumulated for over a century, and frequent déjà vu is also now known to be associated with focal seizures, particularly those of a medial temporal lobe (MTL) origin. A longstanding question is whether seizure-related déjà vu has the same basis and is the same subjective experience as non-seizure déjà vu.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: To determine the association between surgical lesions of distinct gray and white structures and connections with favorable postoperative seizure outcomes.
Methods: Patients with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) from 3 epilepsy centers were included. We employed a voxel-based and connectome-based mapping approach to determine the association between favorable outcomes and surgery-induced temporal lesions.
Mapping of cortical functions is critical for the best clinical care of patients undergoing epilepsy and tumor surgery, but also to better understand human brain function and connectivity. The purpose of this review is to explore existing and potential means of mapping higher cortical functions, including stimulation mapping, passive mapping, and connectivity analyses. We examine the history of mapping, differences between subdural and stereoelectroencephalographic approaches, and some risks and safety aspects, before examining different types of functional mapping.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe purpose of this review is to describe the functional anatomy of the precuneal cortex and outline some semiological features of precuneal seizures. The precuneal cortex is a structure that occupies the posterior medial portion of the parietal lobe, and it has broad cortical and subcortical connections. Neuroanatomical tracing, functional imaging, as well as electrical stimulation studies of humans and other primates have elucidated many complex integrative functions of the precuneus including visuo-spatial imagery, sensorimotor functions, and consciousness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Corticocortical evoked potentials (CCEPs) resulting from single pulse electrical stimulation are increasingly used to understand seizure networks, as well as normal brain connectivity. However, we observed that when using depth electrodes, traditional measures of CCEPs amplitude using a referential montage can be falsely localizing, often to white matter.
Methods: We pooled 27 linear electrode arrays targeting the amygdala, hippocampus, or cingulate cortex from eight participants.
Background: Mouse models are beneficial to understanding neural networks given a wide array of transgenic mice and cell-selective techniques. However, instrumentation of mice for neurophysiological studies is difficult. Often surgery is prolonged with experimental error arising from non-concurrent and variable implantations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite commercial availability of software to facilitate sleep-wake scoring of electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) in animals, automated scoring of rodent models of abnormal sleep, such as narcolepsy with cataplexy, has remained elusive. We optimize two machine-learning approaches, supervised and unsupervised, for automated scoring of behavioral states in orexin/ataxin-3 transgenic mice, a validated model of narcolepsy type 1, and additionally test them on wild-type mice. The supervised learning approach uses previously labeled data to facilitate training of a classifier for sleep states, whereas the unsupervised approach aims to discover latent structure and similarities in unlabeled data from which sleep stages are inferred.
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