I have developed "tennis elbow" from lugging this book around the past four weeks, but it is worth the pain, the effort, and the aspirin. It is also worth the (relatively speaking) bargain price. Including appendixes, this book contains 894 pages of text. The entire panorama of the neural sciences is surveyed and examined, and it is comprehensive in its scope, from genomes to social behaviors. The editors explicitly state that the book is designed as "an introductory text for students of biology, behavior, and medicine," but it is hard to imagine any audience, interested in any fragment of neuroscience at any level of sophistication, that would not enjoy this book. The editors have done a masterful job of weaving together the biologic, the behavioral, and the clinical sciences into a single tapestry in which everyone from the molecular biologist to the practicing psychiatrist can find and appreciate his or

Principles of Neural Science

Controlling chaos

The synchronization of chaotic systems

Nonlinear dynamical analysis of EEG and MEG: Review of an emerging field

Complex bodily rhythms are ubiquitous in living organisms. These rhythms arise from stochastic, nonlinear biological mechanisms interacting with a fluctuating environment. Disease often leads to alterations from normal to pathological rhythm. Fundamental questions concerning the dynamics of these rhythmic processes abound. For example, what is the origin of physiological rhythms? How do the rhythms interact with each other and the external environment? Can we decode the fluctuations in physiological rhythms to better diagnose human disease? And can we develop better methods to control pathological rhythms? Mathematical and physical techniques combined with physiological and medical studies are addressing these questions and are transforming our understanding of the rhythms of life.

Synchronization and rhythmic processes in physiology

In a spontaneously bursting neuronal network in vitro, chaos can be demonstrated by the presence of unstable fixed-point behaviour. Chaos control techniques can increase the periodicity of such neuronal population bursting behaviour. Periodic pacing is also effective in entraining such systems, although in a qualitatively different fashion. Using a strategy of anticontrol such systems can be made less periodic. These techniques may be applicable to in vivo epileptic foci.

Controlling chaos in the brain

http://nbresearch.com/PDF/1992/1992_MRIBOX_20030813_083848.pdf

P50 suppression is not affected by attentional manipulations

For patients with medically intractable epilepsy, there have been few effective alternatives to resective surgery, a destructive, irreversible treatment. A strategy receiving increased attention is using interictal spike patterns and continuous EEG measurements from epileptic patients to predict and ultimately control seizure activity via chemical or electrical control systems. This work compares results of seven linear and nonlinear methods (analysis of power spectra, cross-correlation, principal components, phase, wavelets, correlation integral, and mutual prediction) in detecting the earliest dynamical changes preceding 12 intracranially-recorded seizures from 4 patients. A method of counting standard deviations was used to compare across methods, and the earliest departures from thresholds determined from non-seizure EEG were compared to a neurologist's judgement. For these data, the nonlinear methods offered no predictive advantage over the linear methods. All the methods described here were successful in detecting changes leading to a seizure between one and two minutes before the first changes noted by the neurologist, although analysis of phase correlation proved the most robust. The success of phase analysis may be due in part to its complete insensitivity to amplitude, which may provide a significant source of error.

/pdf/early-seizure-detection-6wgl1apdf2.pdf

Early seizure detection.

http://complex.gmu.edu/neural/papers/JergerClinNeurophy2005.pdf

Multivariate linear discrimination of seizures.

1. The effects of frequency of orthodromic and antidromic stimulation of CA3 on formation of electrographic seizurelike discharges in CA1 was studied in the high potassium hippocampal slice. 2. Within the range of stimulation of CA3 used, 0.1-10.0 Hz, a narrow range was identified between 1.0 and 1.3 Hz, where the tonic phase of seizure generation in CA1 was suppressed. This suppression was observed for both Schaffer collateral and mossy fiber stimulation.

Kristin K. Jerger

Papers

Controlling chaos in the brain

P50 suppression is not affected by attentional manipulations

Early seizure detection.

Multivariate linear discrimination of seizures.

Periodic pacing an in vitro epileptic focus.