The impact of seizure frequency and disease duration on brain metabolic connectivity in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy patients
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Benjaram, Khushal
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Huang, Chuan
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Abstract
Epilepsy is a brain disorder that impacts over 50 million people worldwide and is defined by recurrent seizures. Currently, there is limited information in relation to epilepsy pathologies and clinical components such as disease duration and seizure frequency. This study explores mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) from a network-centric perspective, examining the impact of recurrent seizures on brain function using Positron Emission Tomography (PET) data acquired through simultaneous PET/Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging. Metabolic connectivity maps were generated using PET data to evaluate brain network alterations in MR-Hippocampal sclerosis and MR-negative MTLE patients with respect to increasing disease duration and seizure frequency. Euclidean distance, or 2-norm was used to compare subject metabolic connectivity maps to healthy controls, quantifying metabolic similarity across ipsilateral and contralateral regions. 2-norm analysis revealed that metabolic connectivity in MR-HS patients became more similar to healthy controls as seizure frequency increased, with a less pronounced trend in MR-negative patients. In contrast, disease duration had minimal effect on connectivity patterns, suggesting seizure frequency may play a more significant role in network disruption. These results suggest considerations of clinical components such as disease duration and seizure frequency can be beneficial in guiding treatment decisions and developing targeted, seizure-focused therapeutic strategies.
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Undergraduate Research Option Thesis