Fluctuations in EEG band power at subject-specific timescales over minutes to days explain changes in seizure evolutions

TL;DR

This study investigates how fluctuations in EEG band power over minutes to days relate to changes in seizure evolution, revealing subject-specific patterns that could inform future treatment strategies.

Contribution

It demonstrates that fluctuations in intracranial EEG over multiple timescales can explain variations in seizure dynamics within individual patients.

Findings

Circadian fluctuations in EEG band power are observed in all subjects.

Subject-specific fluctuations on various timescales are identified.

These fluctuations can predict changes in seizure evolution above chance level.

Abstract

Epilepsy is recognised as a dynamic disease, where both seizure susceptibility and seizure characteristics themselves change over time. Specifically, we recently quantified the variable electrographic spatio-temporal seizure evolutions that exist within individual patients. This variability appears to follow subject-specific circadian, or longer, timescale modulations. It is therefore important to know whether continuously-recorded interictal iEEG features can capture signatures of these modulations over different timescales. In this work, we analyse continuous intracranial electroencephalographic (iEEG) recordings from video-telemetry units and find fluctuations in iEEG band power over timescales ranging from minutes up to twelve days. As expected and in agreement with previous studies, we find that all subjects show a circadian fluctuation in their iEEG band power. We additionally find other fluctuations of similar magnitude on subject-specific timescales. Importantly, we find that a combination of these fluctuations on different timescales can explain changes in seizure evolutions in most subjects above chance level. These results suggest that subject-specific fluctuations in iEEG band power over timescales of minutes to days may serve as markers of seizure modulating processes. We hope that future work can link these detected fluctuations to their biological driver(s). There is a critical need to better understand seizure modulating processes, as this will enable the development of novel treatment strategies that could minimise the seizure spread, duration, or severity and therefore the clinical impact of seizures.