Fundamental Research Of Pathophysiology Mechanism Of Epilepsy Based On Resting State Functional Mri

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder. The electrophysiology characteristic is abnormally high excitability and synchronization of the neural activity, which will cause recurrent and temporary dysfunction of the central nervous system. For many years, people have being engaged in clinical and foundational research on epilepsy from different aspects. With the development of research, people have a certain understanding of the pathophysiological mechanism, but there are a lot of things which need further study.The functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) based on the theory of blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) is a non-invasive technology with high temporal and spatial resolution, which make this technology become an important tool to do scientific researches on brain. Resting state functional MRI could be an advantageous choice for clinical researches and applications because it can be more easily accepted by neuropsychiatric patients without intricate experiment designing and subjects'response.The aim of our research is to investigate the abnormal brain activity of patients with epilepsy by analyzing the resting state fMRI data from the aspects of regional homogeneity and topological properties of brain functional networks, which will give clues for the study of pathophysiological mechanism of epilepsy. The main contents and innovations of this thesis are as follows:1. Regional homogeneity (ReHo) approach was used to investigate medial temporal lobe epilepsy and generalized tonic–clonic seizures epilepsy. As compared to the controls, the patients with medial temporal lobe epilepsy or generalized tonic–clonic seizures epilepsy exhibited significant regional homogeneity abnormalities. The result preliminarily indicates that ReHo can detect the abnormal regional homogeneity of the BOLD signals caused by epilepsy, and may be helpful to explore the pathophysiological mechanism of epilepsy.2. Small-world network analytical method was used to investigate generalized tonic–clonic seizures epilepsy. The thesis analyzed the changes of functional brain networks between the healthy subjects and patients with generalized tonic–clonic seizures epilepsy from the aspect of topological properties. Compared with the controls, the tolerance and small-wordness of brain functional network decreased obviously, and the degree of node were altered in patients. The preliminary result indicates that this method can detect the abnormal functional network of epilepsy, and may be helpful to explore the pathophysiological mechanism of epilepsy.