Characterizing nonlinearity in invasive EEG recordings from temporal lobe epilepsy (Q2564818)

Invasive electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings from depth and subdural electrodes, performed in eight patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, are analyzed using a variety of nonlinear techniques. A surrogate data technique is used to find strong evidence for nonlinearities in epileptogenic regions of the brain. Most of these nonlinearities are characterized as ``spiking'' by a wavelet analysis. A small fraction of the nonlinearities are characterized as ``recurrent'' by a nonlinear prediction algorithm. Recurrent activity is found to occur in spatio-temporal patterns related to the location of the epileptogenic focus. Residual delay maps, used to characterize ``lag-one nonlinearity'', are remarkably stationary for a given electrode, and exhibit striking variations among electrodes. The clinical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.