Xiaoxiao Bai1, Matthew Vestal1, Rachel Berman1, Michiro Negishi2, Edward Novotny1,3, Todd Constable2, Hal Blumenfeld1,4
1Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; 2Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; 3Pediatrics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; 4Neurobiology and Neurosurgery, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
Simultaneous EEG-fMRI measurements were conducted in 8 children with 40 typical childhood absence epilepsy. Three different methods were performed: 1. fMRI data were analyzed using SPM2, and the HRF onset was systematically shifted in 1s increments from -20s to +20s relative to seizure onset. 2. The SPM MRI template was segmented into 13 cortical and sub-cortical regions in each hemisphere. SPM activation or deactivation clusters in each anatomic region were used to obtain mean time-courses using MARSBAR. 3. Correlation, timing, and PCA analyses were performed on the time courses. Results demonstrate a complex sequence of changes in absence seizures, undetectable by canonical HRF modeling. Cortical and subcortical network changes happen both before and after absence seizures.