Next: Methods
Up: index
Previous: index
Local changes in cortical activation (caused by inputs from subcortical regions or external stimulation) may contribute to seizure propagation through normal neocortical tissue. Investigations of these phenomena can provide important insights into the dynamics of mesial temporal seizure generation and spread. While cellular neurophysiological techniques have undergone dramatic advances in recent years (including but not limited to the techniques of patch and whole cell clamp), allowing better delineation of membrane characteristics, experimental preparations are still limited to analysis of data from restricted regions. Neuronal modeling to date has produced models of complicated single neuron compartments with discrete dendritic, somatic and axonal properties. Some networks have been modeled and studied in both the hippocampus and neocortex to help explain burst generation and enhancement. The studies proposed here are novel in that they simulate relatively large neural networks (up to 64,000 connected neurons) to learn the influence of local stimulation on seizure generation and propagation. To allow for analysis of arrays of large numbers of neurons, the neuronal compartments have been simplified and the interactions have been defined in terms of net excitation and inhibition. In previous work, we reported studies of neural network models that can reproduce the spread of synchronous bursting activity in response to brief current stimulation. In present studies we investigate how various frequencies of periodic stimulation of these networks affect the firing patterns of single neurons and the spatiotemporal patterns of activity in the entire network. These modeled networks should yield important insights regarding the changes in cortical activation that may contribute to the patterns of neocortical seizure propagation.
Next: Methods
Up: index
Previous: index