HiLTS: Human in the Loop Therapeutic System: A Wireless-enabled Precision Medicine Platform for Brainwave Entrainment

TL;DR

This paper presents a minimal digital chip capable of generating a 6 Hz rhythm to entrain epileptic seizures, demonstrating a low-power, simplified approach for potential wearable seizure intervention devices.

Contribution

Introduces a custom-designed digital chip for neural entrainment at 6 Hz, offering a low-power, simplified alternative to complex existing neuromodulation systems.

Findings

The chip produces a stable 6 Hz oscillation that overrides seizure activity.

Frequency and time domain analyses confirm effective seizure entrainment.

Proof-of-concept for low-power, wearable seizure intervention devices.

Abstract

Epileptic seizures arise from abnormally synchronised neural activity and remain a major global health challenge, affecting more than 50 million people worldwide. Despite advances in pharmacological interventions, a significant proportion of patients continue to experience uncontrolled seizures, underscoring the need for alternative neuromodulation strategies. Rhythmic neural entrainment has recently emerged as a promising mechanism for disrupting pathological synchrony, but most existing systems rely on complex analogue electronics or high-power stimulation hardware. This study investigates a minimal digital custom-designed chip that generates a stable 6 Hz oscillation capable of entraining epileptic seizure activity. Using a publicly available EEG seizure dataset, we extracted and averaged analogue seizure waveforms, digitised them to emulate neural front-ends, and directly interfaced the digitised signals with digital output recordings acquired from the chip using a Saleae Logic analyser. The chip pulse train was resampled and low-pass-reconstructed to produce an analogue 6 Hz waveform, allowing direct comparison between seizure morphology, its digitised representation, and the entrained output. Frequency-domain and time-domain analyses demonstrate that the chip imposes a narrow-band 6 Hz rhythm that overrides the broadband spectral profile of seizure activity. These results provide a proof-of-concept for low-power digital custom-designed entrainment as a potential pathway toward simplified, wearable seizure-interruption devices for precision medicine and future healthcare devices.