Schedule for: 22w2244 - Recent Progress in Detection and Prediction of Epilepsy

Note: the Lecture rooms are available after 16:00.

Beverages and a small assortment of snacks are available in the lounge on a cash honour system.

A buffet breakfast is served daily between 7:00am and 9:00am in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building. Note that BIRS does not pay for meals for 2-day workshops.

A brief introduction to BIRS with important logistical information, technology instruction, and opportunity for participants to ask questions.

We dedicate this time to discuss the life and legacy of Dr. Kris Vasudevan. The session will be completed by the talk of a MSc graduate Yanina Bazhan co-supervised by Dr. Vasudevan.

A buffet lunch is served daily between 11:30am and 1:30pm in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building. Note that BIRS does not pay for meals for 2-day workshops.

Meet in foyer of TCPL to participate in the BIRS group photo. The photograph will be taken outdoors, so dress appropriately for the weather. Please don't be late, or you might not be in the official group photo!

A buffet dinner is served daily between 5:30pm and 7:30pm in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building. Note that BIRS does not pay for meals for 2-day workshops.

A myriad of pathological changes associated with epilepsy can be recast as decreases in cell and circuit heterogeneity. We thus propose recontextualizing epileptogenesis as a process where reduction in cellular heterogeneity, in part, renders neural circuits less resilient to seizure. By comparing patch clamp recordings from human layer 5 (L5) cortical pyramidal neurons from epileptogenic and non-epileptogenic tissue, we demonstrate significantly decreased biophysical heterogeneity in seizure-generating areas. Implemented computationally, this renders model neural circuits prone to sudden transitions into synchronous states with increased firing activity, paralleling ictogenesis. We extend these findings to the concept of resilience, where a system’s dynamics persist despite changes in intrinsic and/or extrinsic control parameters, preserving associated function. To do this we computationally explore how excitability heterogeneity can influence system resilience to "insults" like increases in network size, connection probability, strength and variability of synaptic weights, and modulatory fluctuations which promote stability transitions. We found that excitability heterogeneity rendered the network more resilient to these insults. To then understand these computational findings, we used spectral theory for large random systems to reveal that excitability heterogeneity is a generic control mechanism promoting: 1) homeostasis, by tuning the distribution of eigenvalues complex plane in a context-dependent way; and 2) resilience, by anchoring this eigenvalue distribution and gradually making it less dependent on modulatory influences. Taken together, these results provide new vistas on the contribution of a fundamental organising principle of the brain - neural diversity - to brain resilience.

2-day workshop participants are welcome to use BIRS facilities (TCPL) until 15:00 on Sunday, although participants are still required to checkout of the guest rooms by 11 M. There is no coffee break service on Sunday afternoon, but self-serve coffee and tea are always available in the 2nd floor lounge, Corbett Hall.