SIMULATION OF HEALTHY AND EPILEPTIFORM BRAIN ACTIVITY USING CELLULAR AUTOMATA

Abstract

In this study, we first present a modeling mechanism for the loss of neurons in limbic brain regions (epileptogenic focus) that could cause epileptic seizures by spreading the pathological dynamics from the focal to healthy brain regions. Prior work has shown that Cellular Automata (CAs) are very effective in simulating physical systems and solving scientific problems by capturing essential global features of the systems resulting from the collective effect of simple system components that interact locally. Nontrivial CAs are obtained whenever the dependence on the values at each CA site is nonlinear. Consequently, in this study, we show that brain activity in a healthy and epileptic state can be simulated by CA long-range interactions. Results from analysis of CA simulation data, as well as real electroencephalographic (EEG) data clearly show the efficiency of the proposed CA algorithm for simulation of the transition to an epileptic state. The results are in agreement with ones from previous studies about the existence of high-dimensional stochastic behavior during the healthy state and low-dimensional chaotic behavior during the epileptic state. The correspondence of the CA simulation results with the ones from real EEG data analysis implies that the spatiotemporal chaotic dynamics of the epileptic brain are similar to observed nonequilibrium phase transition processes in spatially distributed complex systems.