Development of optimal stimuli in a heterogeneous model of epileptic spike-wave oscillations

Neural simulation has been widely suggested as an alternative therapy for the treatment of medically-intractable seizures. Appropriate targeting of control stimuli at selected cortical locations may lead to seizure abatement. Neural population models describe the macroscopic neural activity that can be clinically recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG). These models provide a safer way to develop and test the effect of such simulation strategies. In this study, a heterogeneously connected neural field model has been used which can replicate spatio-temporal patterns commonly observed in the EEG during generalized seizures. Seizure abatement has been formulated as an optimal control problem and the pseudospectral method has been used to develop stimuli with anti-ictogenic properties. The minimum energy optimal stimuli, developed in this study have been shown to abate seizures simulated from the model. It has been demonstrated that the control stimuli are spatially variant due to the underlying heterogeneity of the neural dynamics. This study provides a novel approach for designing optimal stimuli for seizure abatement while taking into account the heterogeneous dynamics of the human brain. It also raises the possibility of finding the appropriate set of cortical locations which may be stimulated to achieveP the anti-seizure effect.