Network models of epilepsy-related pathological structural and functional alterations in the dentate gyrus

Raikov, I., Plitt, M., and Soltesz, I. (2017). In: Van Ooyen, A., and Butz-Ostendorf, M., eds. The Rewiring Brain: A Computational Approach to Structural Plasticity in the Adult Brain. San Diego: Academic Press, pp. 485-503.

Abstract

In this chapter, we review the development of biophysically detailed data-driven network models of the dentate gyrus that address clinically relevant structural alterations during epileptogenesis and their effects on network dynamics that potentially lead to hyperexcitability and pathological high frequency oscillations associated with epilepsy in general, and temporal lobe epilepsy in particular. We then discuss the applications of graph-theoretical analysis to characterize and compare the connectivity of large-scale networks under normal and pathological conditions and the potential applications of such analyses to clinical intervention strategies. We conclude by highlighting our recent methodology for generating realistic models of dendritic morphologies on a large scale and discussing its role in constructing future models of the hippocampus. The main contributions of the reviewed work are the quantification of the relationship between pathological network reorganization and the emergence of hypersynchronous network activity in computational models, and graph-theoretic analysis that has revealed fundamental aspects of the epileptic brain network reorganization such as the changes in small-worldness and hub properties.