The potential scale-free network mechanism underlying the formation of focal epilepsy

¹ School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Science and Technology Beijing - Beijing 100083, China
² Epilepsy Center, Sanbo Brain Hospital, Capital Medical University - Beijing, China
³ Department of Dynamics and Control, Beihang University - Beijing, 100191, China

^(a) E-mail: dgfan@ustb.edu.cn (corresponding author)
^(b) E-mail: luangm3@163.com
^(c) E-mail: nmqingyun@163.com

Received: 23 October 2022
Accepted: 16 January 2023

Abstract

Abnormal brain networks are likely to be the trigger of seizure generation of epilepsy. Clarifying the effects of abnormal structures on brain function is of great significance for brain diseases. Due to the complexity of brain networks, the relationship between structural and functional brain networks is not yet well-defined. In this letter, we apply a generative model depicting the interrelationship between structural and functional connectivity, to reproduce similar resting whole brain networks and focal epileptic networks through networks with different topologies. It is found that only the underlying network connected with scale-free structure can reproduce the properties of focal epilepsy network, while the resting network has a small probability of reproduction under both the small-world network and the scale-free network. In particular, this reproduction capacity is immune to the nodal distance modes of the underlying network. This suggests that there exists severe heterogeneity in the focal epilepsy network similar to the scale-free network, which may facilitate to the clinical structural inference of seizure location.