Local tissue and hemodynamic properties reflect pathological discharges in the epileptic brain

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre 

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological conditions worldwide. Although many epileptic patients improve with anti-seizure medication, up to 40% of them are drug-resistant (Engel, 2016). For these patients, the most successful treatment is epilepsy surgery, whereby the region giving rise to seizures is removed. Non-invasive techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are key to identifying the surgical target and ensuring a seizure-free future in drug-resistant patients. Where conventional MRI is inconclusive, patients need to undergo intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG), an invasive procedure not without risk of complication, that offers restricted spatial sampling. While whole-brain structural and functional alterations have been widely studied in the epileptic brain using a tandem iEEG-MRI approach, finer-scale local alterations have yet to be assessed.