6th International Workshop on Seizure Prediction

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall objective of this effort is to convene the Sixth International Workshop on Seizure Prediction, a forum that brings together an international interdisciplinary group involving epileptologists, engineers, physicists, mathematicians, neurosurgeons and neuroscientists focused on the development of treatments for epilepsy especially based on closed loop prediction and interventions. While this goal has not changed, the group has recognized that the focus of attention needs to shift away from a biological mechanism-free algorithmic approach to EEG and related electrophysiology recordings, and toward a better understanding of underlying physiological mechanisms as they specifically relate to clinical recordings. At a fundamental level, the goal of seizure prediction is to identif the underlying mechanisms of seizure generation and to engineer systems that will detect those dynamics and provide for intervention. This meeting will focus attention on basic questions at the intersection of engineering, computational and epilepsy neuroscience necessary for predicting and intervening with seizures: how seizures arise in the neocortex, how to identify sites of seizure origination, how seizures spread, and how they terminate. We have identified these topics as key roadblocks to further advances in treatment of pharmacoresistant epilepsy syndromes. Through these questions we will focus attention on bridging clinical and physiological metrics to arrive at new approaches to understand epileptic seizure generation mechanisms across all scales of brain from neuron to organism, and especially close the loop between models of seizure generation and physiological observations.