Off the rails - how pathological patterns of whole brain activity emerge in epileptic seizures
In most brains across the animal kingdom, brain dynamics can enter pathological states that are recognisable as epileptic seizures. Yet usually, brain operate within certain constraints given through neuronal function and synaptic coupling, that will prevent epileptic seizure dynamics from emerging. In this talk, I will bring together different approaches to identifying how networks in the broadest sense shape brain dynamics. Using illustrative examples from intracranial EEG recordings, disorders characterised by molecular disruption of a single neurotransmitter receptor type, to single-cell recordings of whole-brain activity in the larval zebrafish, I will address three key questions - (1) how does the regionally specific composition of synaptic receptors shape ongoing physiological brain activity; (2) how can disruption of this regionally specific balance result in abnormal brain dynamics; and (3) which cellular patterns underly the transition into an epileptic seizure.
Indispensable for generating epileptic seizures: where, when, how?
In epilepsy research, a holy grail has been the identification and understanding of the "epileptogenic zone" - operationally defined as the (minimal) area or region of the brain is indispensible for the generation of epileptic seizures. The identification of the epileptogenic zone is particularly important for surgical treatments of focal epilepsy patients, but I will highlight some recent clinical, experimental and theoretical work showing that it is also fundamentally linked with our understanding of epilepsy and seizures. I will conclude with a proposal for an updated understanding of the epileptogenic zone and ictogenesis.