SAN2020

Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disease that affects 1 in 200 people. In 30% of those affected there is a negative response to pharmacological treatment, where this type is called refractory epilepsy. In this case, a surgical intervention is indicated as treatment, where success consists in finding the cortical area responsible for the generation of seizures, called the epileptogenic zone.
In this work, electrical recordings of this area were studied in patients with refractory epilepsy in order to discern the underlying oscillatory mechanisms during the epileptic process. For this, neuronal activity was studied for basal (far from the seizure) and preictal (immediately before the seizure) periods through recordings of intracerebral electrodes implanted in patients to achieve a greater resolution of the local field potential. Then, the intrinsic dynamics of the two types of records was discerned by using a time windows analysis and studying the amplitude and phase couplings for each signal. The causality of these records was also quantified through information theory tools and the Bandt-Pompe permutation methodology, which showed an increases in the carry of information of brain oscillations in the range of high frequencies.