Abstracts

Summary: The identification of the mechanisms that control the initiation of a seizure is crucial to understand ictogenesis and, ultimately, to develop new strategies to cure epilepsy. The most frequent EEG correlate of a focal seizure is a desynchronization and a reduction of voltages (“focal flattening”) Pre-surgical intracranial recordings from different cortical areas in pharmacoresistant patients demonstrated that focal flattening at seizure onset correlates with the occurrence of small amplitude fast activity that precedes synchronous, rhythmic bursting typically associated with an epileptic discharge. The main objective of the proposed Investigator's Workshop is to review the cellular and network mechanisms responsible for fast activity at seizure onset in cortical regions, mainly in temporal lobe. The experimental findings obtained on in vitro models will be integrated and discussed with data obtained from pre-surgical studies with intra-cerebral recordings in human temporal lobe epilepsies and with studies performed on post-surgical brain tissue.