Franca, Lucas Gabriel Souza;
(2020)
Scaling properties and heterogeneous dynamics of epileptic activity.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Epilepsy is a brain disorder characterised by recurrent seizures with a wide range of cognitive, psychological, and social consequences. Seizures are the transient occurrence of signs and symptoms due to abnormal excessive synchronous neural activity. Epilepsy is currently treated with medication or by a resective surgical procedure; however, about 30% of patients still do not achieve seizure control. The unpredictability of when seizures occur means that even infrequent seizures can have a devastating effect on someone’s life and has hampered progress in response mode treatments. There has, therefore, been a major research drive for the development of seizure prediction/detection techniques. These have suffered from poor sensitiv- ity and/or specificity. Moreover, many of the advanced mathematical methods for seizure detection/prediction do no more than reproduce the results of linear and simpler approaches. This thesis focuses on the scaling properties of intracranial electrophysiologi- cal measures from both humans and rats. Firstly, a novel approach to evaluate mul- tifractal properties of brain signals is presented and its properties are demonstrated. Secondly, the developed approach is applied in a series of clinical challenges: distinguishing sleep phases; a study on characteristic time for seizure detection; a pu- tative classification scheme for focal epileptic seizures; and an evaluation of data from an animal model of epileptogenesis. The proposed technique was capable of extracting distinct information from the EEG signals that has clinical utility. Moreover, the multifractal nature of the brain signals hints at how neural structures work and lends support to results from previous research.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Scaling properties and heterogeneous dynamics of epileptic activity |
| Event: | UCL |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2020. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10096941 |
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