Delay-constrained re-entry governs large-scale brain seizures and other network pathologies

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Triebkorn, Paul, Wang, Huifang E., Woodman, Marmaduke, Guye, Maxime, Bartolomei, Fabrice, Jirsa, Viktor
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Triebkorn, Paul
Wang, Huifang E.
Woodman, Marmaduke
Guye, Maxime
Bartolomei, Fabrice
Jirsa, Viktor
author_facet Triebkorn, Paul
Wang, Huifang E.
Woodman, Marmaduke
Guye, Maxime
Bartolomei, Fabrice
Jirsa, Viktor
contents Re-entry of travelling excitation loops is a long-suspected driver of human seizures, yet how such loops arise in patient brain networks -- and how susceptible they are to targeted disruption -- remains unclear. We reconstruct a millimetre-scale virtual brain from diffusion MRI of a drug-resistant epilepsy patient, embed excitable Epileptor neural fields, and show that realistic cortico-cortical delays are sufficient to generate self-sustaining re-entry. Systematic parameter sweeps reveal a narrow delay-coupling window that predicts oscillation frequency and seizure duration across 184 recorded seizures. Precisely timed biphasic stimuli or sub-millimetre virtual lesions abort re-entry in silico, yielding phase-dependent termination rules validated in intracranial recordings. Our framework exposes delay-constrained re-entry as a generic dynamical mechanism for large-scale brain synchrony and provides a patient-specific testbed for precision neuromodulation and minimally invasive disconnection.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_04824
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Delay-constrained re-entry governs large-scale brain seizures and other network pathologies
Triebkorn, Paul
Wang, Huifang E.
Woodman, Marmaduke
Guye, Maxime
Bartolomei, Fabrice
Jirsa, Viktor
Neurons and Cognition
Re-entry of travelling excitation loops is a long-suspected driver of human seizures, yet how such loops arise in patient brain networks -- and how susceptible they are to targeted disruption -- remains unclear. We reconstruct a millimetre-scale virtual brain from diffusion MRI of a drug-resistant epilepsy patient, embed excitable Epileptor neural fields, and show that realistic cortico-cortical delays are sufficient to generate self-sustaining re-entry. Systematic parameter sweeps reveal a narrow delay-coupling window that predicts oscillation frequency and seizure duration across 184 recorded seizures. Precisely timed biphasic stimuli or sub-millimetre virtual lesions abort re-entry in silico, yielding phase-dependent termination rules validated in intracranial recordings. Our framework exposes delay-constrained re-entry as a generic dynamical mechanism for large-scale brain synchrony and provides a patient-specific testbed for precision neuromodulation and minimally invasive disconnection.
title Delay-constrained re-entry governs large-scale brain seizures and other network pathologies
topic Neurons and Cognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04824