Contralateral Gamma Responses Reveal Biomarkers of the Seizure-Onset Zone in Intracranial Stimulation

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Interdisciplinary Centers, Units and Projects::Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF)::Fall Research Expo
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Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering
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Epilepsy
Neuroengineering
Neuroscience
Biology
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2025-09-03
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Sedighi Mournani, Sasan
Aguila, Carlos
Conrad, Erin
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Abstract

Accurate localization of the seizure-onset zone (SOZ) is essential for successful epilepsy surgery, yet current biomarkers such as interictal spikes and high-frequency oscillations (HFOs) often require extended monitoring and yield inconsistent results. Recent studies suggest that stimulation-induced responses, including delayed high-frequency suppression, may co-localize with the SOZ, but evidence has been limited by small datasets and narrow temporal windows. In this study, we investigated whether contralateral gamma- and high-gamma–band activity (30–100+ Hz) can serve as reliable biomarkers of the SOZ. Using intracranial EEG data from patients undergoing low-frequency stimulation (1 Hz, 30s trains, 3 mA biphasic pulses), we applied Morlet wavelet-based event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) analyses with adaptive baseline normalization. Comparisons between SOZ electrodes and their contralateral non-SOZ homologues revealed that SOZ channels exhibited robust, time-locked broadband gamma augmentation, peaking ~150 ms post-stimulation, while contralateral non-SOZ channels remained near baseline. These findings highlight lateralized excitability differences detectable through gamma responses, suggesting that contralateral stimulation-response mapping may offer a practical biomarker for SOZ localization. Future work will expand patient cohorts, apply dimensionality reduction and machine learning approaches, and construct functional atlases of delayed gamma responses to improve surgical planning and precision in epilepsy care.

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2025-09-15
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This project was supported by the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring (PURM) program.
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