Complex dynamics of epileptic EEG

Electroencephalogram (EEG) - the recorded representation of electrical activity of the brain contain useful information about the state of the brain. Recent studies indicate that nonlinear methods can extract valuable information from neuronal dynamics. We compare the dynamical properties of EEG signals of healthy subjects with epileptic subjects using nonlinear time series analysis techniques. Chaotic invariants like correlation dimension (D₂) , largest Lyapunov exponent (λ₁), Hurst exponent (H) and Kolmogorov entropy (K) are used to characterize the signal. Our study showed clear differences in dynamical properties of brain electrical activity of the normal and epileptic subjects with a confidence level of more than 90%. Furthermore to support this claim fractal dimension (FD) analysis is performed. The results indicate reduction in value of FD for epileptic EEG indicating reduction in system complexity.