Following a potential epileptogenic insult, prolonged high rates of nonlinear dynamical regimes of intermittency type is the hallmark of epileptogenesis

Abstract

Abstract The lack of a marker of epileptogenesis is an unmet medical need, not only from the clinical perspective but also from the point of view of the pre-clinical research. Indeed, the lack of this kind of marker affects the investigations on the mechanisms of epileptogenesis as well as the development of novel therapeutic approaches aimed to prevent or to mitigate the severity of the incoming epilepsy in humans. In this work, we provide evidence that in an experimental model of epileptogenesis that mimics the alteration of the blood-brain barrier permeability, a key-mechanism that contributes to the development of epilepsy in humans and in animals, the prolonged occurrence in the electrocorticograms (ECoG) of high rates of a nonlinear dynamical regimes known as intermittency univocally characterizes the population of experimental animals which develop epilepsy, hence it can be considered as the first biophysical marker of epileptogenesis.