Identifying unambiguous changes in cortical activity during the tens of seconds tominutes before epileptic seizures has the potential radically to improve treatmentfor people with epilepsy. For instance, it can be used to trigger adaptive treatments,such as therapeutic electrical stimulation (discussed elsewhere in this monograph)or focal drug delivery, which could interfere with mechanisms involved in tran-sition to seizure. Methods for seizure prediction are described extensively in thismonograph. They mainly use EEG data from patients with analyses ranging fromthe relatively simple to the exceedingly complex. However, the ideal method with ahigh sensitivity and low false positive rate has yet to be found. There is an argumentthat understanding the neuronal and/or population behavior preceding seizureswill greatly help to identify better approaches to prediction [1], and may also leadto improved therapeutic targets.
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