Seizure Propagation and Network Motif Reorganization in SEEG

Overview

Epileptic seizures are fundamentally network phenomena, yet how the mesoscale architecture of directed brain networks transforms during ictal evolution remains poorly understood. Existing analyses operate either at the level of individual connections or whole-network summary statistics, leaving a critical gap at the level of local circuit motifs.

This project applies three-node directed network motif analysis to SEEG recordings from patients with drug-resistant focal epilepsy. Network motifs — recurring patterns of interconnections among small groups of nodes — serve as the fundamental building blocks of complex networks and capture circuit-level organization invisible to standard connectivity metrics. Using directed functional connectivity estimated across multiple frequency bands, we track how the prevalence of all 13 canonical motif configurations evolves across baseline, pre-ictal, ictal, and post-ictal states.

The goal is to characterize how local circuit architecture reorganizes during seizures, whether this reorganization relates to surgical outcome, and whether motif dynamics carry spatial information about the epileptogenic network.

Manuscript in preparation.