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Epilepsy: Computational Models

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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

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Introduction

Epilepsy is a serious neurological disorder characterized by spontaneous recurrent seizures. In the electroencephalogram (EEG) of patients with epilepsy, one may observe seizures (ictal events) and interictal events, e.g., epileptic spikes or spike-waves. These events are characterized by a short duration and rapid onset and offset. The real problem is that about 30 % of the current population of 60 million patients with epilepsy does not respond to any treatment (Kwan and Brodie 2000). This problem is mostly due to an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms that underlie this pathology (e.g., van Drongelen 2007). As is the case for many other neurological diseases, this directly relates to a poor understanding of network function in general. Because of lack of experimental tools for studying network behavior at sufficient scale with the associated detail (e.g., van Drongelen 2010), there is a significant role for modeling in this field (e.g., Blenkinsop et al. 2012;...

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Dr. Ralph and Marian Falk Medical Research Trust.

Parts of the text are modified from van Drongelen (2013) and van Gils et al. (2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Twente, Drienerlolaan 5, 7522 NB, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Prof. Stephan van Gils

  2. Department of Pediatrics, The University of Chicago, KCBD 4124, 900 E 57th Street, 60637, Chicago, IL, USA

    Prof. Wim van Drongelen

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  1. Prof. Stephan van Gils
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  2. Prof. Wim van Drongelen
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Correspondence to Stephan van Gils .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

    Ranu Jung

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van Gils, S., van Drongelen, W. (2013). Epilepsy: Computational Models. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_504-1

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