Electroencephalography (EEG)

Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive technique that records the brain’s electrical activity using small sensors placed on the scalp. In epilepsy patients, it can detect specific abnormalities in brain activity, making it an important tool for diagnosis and treatment.

About 30% of people with epilepsy continue to have seizures despite medication. For these patients, epilepsy surgery (removing the brain area responsible for generating seizures) can be the most effective treatment. However, surgery is only possible when clinicians can clearly identify that seizures originate from a single area in the brain (the “epileptogenic zone”) and confirm that this area does not support essential functions such as movement, language, or vision.

To determine whether a patient is a good candidate for surgery, a comprehensive presurgical evaluation is performed. This evaluation consists of multiple non-invasive technical investigations, including long-term video-EEG monitoring. In selected patients, these non-invasive investigations do not provide sufficient information to precisely localize the epileptogenic zone. In these more complex cases, intracranial EEG (iEEG) is required, with electrodes placed directly on or within the brain to record electrical activity with much higher spatial and temporal precision.

In current clinical practice, EEG recordings are analyzed visually by trained neurologists. At 4Brain, we aim to complement this approach with advanced computational analyses of scalp EEG and intracranial EEG data. Our research focuses on improving the localization of the epileptogenic zone, predicting surgical outcome, and gaining a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying epilepsy.