Fundamental Research Of Epilepsy Based On Functional MRI And EEG

Epilepsy is a common clinical nervous system disease with electrophysiological features of repeated and temporary nervous system dysfunction caused by severe imbalance of cerebral electrophysiology activity aroused by abnormal neuronal discharging. Approximately 20% of patients with epilepsy continue to have seizures despite adequate anti-epileptic drug treatment, which severely affects patients'quality-of-life. Therefore, it is necessary to open research on pathological mechanisms of epilepsy. The principal content and innovation of the present study are as follows:1. Amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) was used to investigate mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE). Firstly, this study recruited 45 cases of mTLE and 40 cases of normal volunteers during resting state. We analyzed variability of brain activity between mesial temporal lobe epilepsy and volunteers from the perspective of ALFF. As a result of statistical analysis, we can observe significant variability on brain activity between mesial temporal lobe epilepsy and normal volunteers. This study manifests that ALFF can detect change in synchronous of cerebral blood flow, blood volume, and oxy-hemoglobin caused by epileptic discharges and help to reveal the pathological mechanism of epilepsy.2. Simultaneous recording of scalp EEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging technology (EEG-fMRI) was applied to research of childhood absence epilepsy. The study collected 57 patients using EEG-fMRI method, and mainly focused on 7 cases of typical childhood absence epilepsy. Analysis of fMRI signal using 3Hz power-spectrum method finds variability of blood oxygenation-level dependent synchronization in some regional brain areas. This research shows that EEG-fMRI technology has a high sensitivity in detecting epileptic activity, thus contributing to reveal the pathogenesis of epilepsy.