Delayed Mutual Information to Develop Functional Analysis on Epileptic Signals

Epilepsy is the second most prevalent brain disorder affecting approximately 70 million people worldwide. A modern approach to develop the brain study is to model it as a system of systems, represented by a network of oscillators, in which the emergent property of synchronisation occurs. Based on this perspective, epileptic seizures can be understood as a process of hyper-synchronisation between brain areas. To investigate such process, a case study was conducted applying Delayed Mutual Information (DMI) to perform functional connectivity analysis, investigating the channel capacity (C) and transmission rate (R) between brain areas - cortex, hippocampus and thalamus - during basal and infusion intervals, before the beginning of generalised tonic-clonic behaviour (TCG). The main contribution of this paper is the study of channel capacity and transmission rate between brain areas. A case study performed using 5 LFP signals from rodents showed that the applied methodology represents an another appropriate alternative to existing methods for functional analysis such as Granger Causality, Partial Directed Coherence, Transfer Entropy, providing insights on epileptic brain communication.