ADVENCING EPILEPSY RESEARCH

THE DYNAMIC EPILEPTIC BRAIN

Epilepsy is the most common neurological disorder after migraine. Despite decades of research, scant progress has been made in understanding its underlying mechanisms, perhaps because epilepsy is a typical ill-posed problem. Epilepsy is a very complex disorder characterised by complex dynamics at different time scales. At the minute timescale: despite the existence of universal rules explaining seizure dynamics across brain regions and species, there are multiple biophysical mechanisms that can lead to seizure genesis, even in the same individual. At the day timescale: the daily (circadian) molecular remapping of hippocampal circuits renders the study of mechanisms time-dependent, which may explain why seizures display circadian rhythmicity in epilepsy. Finally, at the decade timescale. Not all individuals develop epilepsy after an initial insult. I shall show how past events can strongly influence the development of epilepsy and associated co-morbidities (depression and cognitive deficits).

Christophe BERNARD