Probabilistic ictal EEG sources and temporal lobe epilepsy surgical outcome

For patients with medication refractory medial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE), surgery offers the hope of a cure. However, up to 30% of patients with MTLE continue to experience disabling seizures after surgery. The reasons why some patients do not achieve seizure freedom are poorly understood. A promising theory suggests that epileptogenic networks are broadly distributed in surgically refractory MTLE, involving regions beyond the medial temporal lobe. In this retrospective study, we aimed to investigate the distribution of epileptogenic networks in MTLE using Bayesian distributed EEG source analysis from preoperative ictal onset recordings. This analysis has the advantage of generating maps of source probability, which can be subjected to voxel-based statistical analyses.

We compared 10 patients who achieved post-surgical seizure freedom with 10 patients who continued experiencing seizures after surgery. Voxel-based Wilcoxon tests were employed with correction for multiple comparisons.

We observed that ictal EEG source intensities were significantly more likely to occur in lateral temporal and posterior medial temporal regions in patients with continued seizures post-surgery.

Our findings support the theory of broader spatial distribution of epileptogenic networks at seizure onset in patients with surgically refractory MTLE.