Abstract:
Discharges of different epilepsies are characterized by different signal shape and
duration. The authors adhere to the hypothesis that spike-wave discharges are long transient
processes rather than attractors. This helps to explain some experimentally observed properties
of discharges, including the absence of a special termination mechanism and quasi-regularity.
Analytical approaches mostly cannot be applied to studying transient dynamics in large
networks. Therefore, to test the observed phenomena for universality one has to show that the
same results can be achieved using different model types for nodes and different connectivity
terms. Here, we study a class of simple network models of a thalamocortical system and show
that for the same connectivity matrices long, but finite in time quasi-regular processes mimicking
epileptic spike-wave discharges can be found using nodes described by three neuron models:
FitzHugh – Nagumo, Morris – Lecar and Hodgkin – Huxley. This result takes place both for linear
and nonlinear sigmoid coupling.
Keywords:transient process, epilepsy, mathematical modeling, complex network, thalamocortical system
References