Monday, October 22
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. 
Discovery, Room 331

Yuan Wang
Assistant Professor, PhD, MPhil

“Topological Permutation Tests in Seizure Localization”

Light refreshments will be provided.

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder marked by sudden recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance, loss of consciousness, or convulsions, associated with abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Approximately one-third of epilepsy patients do not respond to antiepileptic drug treatment and have to revert to surgical removal of the tissues generating seizures in the patient’s brain. Post-operative seizure freedom largely depends on the accurate localization and delineation of the seizure onset zone. Seizure localization is typically based on visual inspection by epileptologists of electroencephalographic (EEG) signals recorded at multiple sites on the scalp or directly in the brain of an epilepsy patient. Efficient seizure localization algorithms will potentially improve the chances of surgical success for patients. To this purpose, we build on elements of computational topology to develop statistical tests for comparing EEG signals before, during and after a seizure attack. The first part of the talk covers a pilot study on a multisite single-trial EEG dataset revealing a spatial pattern of test results related to the diagnosed seizure onset zone. The second part of the talk covers the progress of research on stereo-EEG signals from epilepsy patients who have undergone surgical removals of the diagnosed seizure onset zone and have remained seizure-free for some post-operative time windows.