Power-to-power cross-frequency coupling as a novel approach for temporal lobe seizure detection and analysis

Power-to-power cross-frequency coupling (CFC) is a novel method to index the dynamic spatio-temporal interactions between brain rhythms, including high frequency oscillations (HFOs). This research evaluates this promising method's capacity for seizure detection with intracranial EEG. Seizures can be conceptualized as composites of different electrographic patterns including (1) spike, (2) ripple-on-spike, and (3) ripple-on-oscillation. This study also performs a basic CFC analysis of each of these components which has potential to further the understanding of epileptogenic processes.

In this study, deep learning networks including Stacked Sparse Autoencoder (SSAE) and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) are trained to detect seizures and help characterize CFC patterns for these three common seizure components. The analysis uses intracranial EEG (iEEG) records from the ieeg.org (Mayo Clinic files) database. Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) seizures ( n = 120) from 26 patients were analyzed along with segments of background activity. Power-to-power coupling was calculated between all frequencies 1-250 Hz pairwise using the EEGLAB toolbox. CFC matrices of seizure and background activity were used as training or testing inputs to the autoencoder.

The trained network was able to recognize background and seizure segments (not used in training) with a sensitivity of 90.2%, specificity of 96.8% and overall accuracy of 93.4%. The three seizure components (spike, ripple-on-spike, ripple-on-oscillation) were also observed to have unique CFC signatures.

The results provide evidence both for (1) the relevance of power-to-power coupling (PPC) for TLE seizure detection in iEEG, as well as (2) there existing unique PPC signatures of three common seizure components.