Seizure warning algorithm based on optimization and nonlinear dynamics

There is growing evidence that temporal lobe seizures are preceded by a preictal transition, characterized by a gradual dynamical change from asymptomatic interictal state to seizure. We herein report the first prospective analysis of the online automated algorithm for detecting the preictal transition in ongoing EEG signals. Such, the algorithm constitutes a seizure warning system. The algorithm estimates STL_max, a measure of the order or disorder of the signal, of EEG signals recorded from individual electrode sites. The optimization techniques were employed to select critical brain electrode sites that exhibit the preictal transition for the warning of epileptic seizures. Specifically, a quadratically constrained quadratic 0-1 programming problem is formulated to identify critical electrode sites. The automated seizure warning algorithm was tested in continuous, long-term EEG recordings obtained from 5 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. For individual patient, we use the first half of seizures to train the parameter settings, which is evaluated by ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curve analysis. With the best parameter setting, the algorithm applied to all cases predicted an average of 91.7% of seizures with an average false prediction rate of 0.196 per hour. These results indicate that it may be possible to develop automated seizure warning devices for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.Mathematics Subject Classification (1991):20E28, 20G40, 20C20     

Heritability of Stroop and flanker performance in 12-year old children

Background  

There is great interest in appropriate phenotypes that serve as indicator of genetically transmitted frontal (dys)function, such as ADHD. Here we investigate the ability to deal with response conflict, and we ask to what extent performance variation on response interference tasks is caused by genetic variation. We tested a large sample of 12-year old monozygotic and dizygotic twins on two well-known and closely related response interference tasks; the color Stroop task and the Eriksen flanker task. Using structural equation modelling we assessed the heritability of several performance indices derived from those tasks.     

Adaptive epileptic seizure prediction system

Current epileptic seizure "prediction" algorithms are generally based on the knowledge of seizure occurring time and analyze the electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings retrospectively. It is then obvious that, although these analyses provide evidence of brain activity changes prior to epileptic seizures, they cannot be applied to develop implantable devices for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. In this paper, we describe an adaptive procedure to prospectively analyze continuous, long-term EEG recordings when only the occurring time of the first seizure is known. The algorithm is based on the convergence and divergence of short-term maximum Lyapunov exponents (STLmax) among critical electrode sites selected adaptively. A warning of an impending seizure is then issued. Global optimization techniques are applied for selecting the critical groups of electrode sites. The adaptive seizure prediction algorithm (ASPA) was tested in continuous 0.76 to 5.84 days intracranial EEG recordings from a group of five patients with refractory temporal lobe epilepsy. A fixed parameter setting applied to all cases predicted 82% of seizures with a false prediction rate of 0.16/h. Seizure warnings occurred an average of 71.7 min before ictal onset. Similar results were produced by dividing the available EEG recordings into half training and testing portions. Optimizing the parameters for individual patients improved sensitivity (84% overall) and reduced false prediction rate (0.12/h overall). These results indicate that ASPA can be applied to implantable devices for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.     

改进光电晶体管线性运行的反馈电路

当设计者用光电晶体管将一个调制后的光信号转换成电信号时,如果有高亮度的背光使光电晶体管饱和,就会遇到麻烦.当光电晶体管基极端悬浮时,其集电极/射极电压只取决于信号与背光重叠而产生的光电流.光电晶体管增益及其作用区范围由R1阻值(见图1)确定.R1阻值较高时,电路的增益增加,但光电晶体管会很快饱和.图1中没有背光照射时,晶体管工作在其线性区的偏置点φ2,Q1的集电极电压围绕VCE作线性变化.其输出VOUT准确地重复使调制光信号产生幅度波动.当施加外部稳定的背光照明时,电路的工作点移至偏置点φ3,输出电压被压缩并出现失真.     

The contribution of high frequencies to human brain activity underlying horizontal localization of natural spatial sounds

Background  

In the field of auditory neuroscience, much research has focused on the neural processes underlying human sound localization. A recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) study investigated localization-related brain activity by measuring the N1m event-related response originating in the auditory cortex. It was found that the dynamic range of the right-hemispheric N1m response, defined as the mean difference in response magnitude between contralateral and ipsilateral stimulation, reflects cortical activity related to the discrimination of horizontal sound direction. Interestingly, the results also suggested that the presence of realistic spectral information within horizontally located spatial sounds resulted in a larger right-hemispheric N1m dynamic range. Spectral cues being predominant at high frequencies, the present study further investigated the issue by removing frequencies from the spatial stimuli with low-pass filtering. This resulted in a stepwise elimination of direction-specific spectral information. Interaural time and level differences were kept constant. The original, unfiltered stimuli were broadband noise signals presented from five frontal horizontal directions and binaurally recorded for eight human subjects with miniature microphones placed in each subject's ear canals. Stimuli were presented to the subjects during MEG registration and in a behavioral listening experiment.     

Time-frequency representation of electrocorticograms in temporallobe epilepsy

Three time-frequency distributions are evaluated in terms of their efficacy in representing nonstationary electrocorticograms (ECoG's) in human temporal lobe epilepsy. The results of a new method, the exponential distribution, are compared with those of the spectrogram and the Wigner distribution. It is shown that the exponential distribution represents a considerable improvement over the spectrogram in terms of resolution and markedly reduces cross-terms present in the Wigner distribution. Exponential distribution representations of ECoG's from different stages of an epileptic record are developed as contour maps. These high-resolution representations offer a lucid display of temporal-spectral features of the rapidly varying signals that constitute ECoG's recorded in temporal lobe epilepsy.