[Aspuru-Guzik group list] [IACS-events] IACS Seminar Friday, March 15: Mark Kramer (Boston University) on Multi-scale Seizure Dynamics

Date: Friday, March 15, 2013 Speaker: Mark Kramer, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Boston University Location: Maxwell-Dworkin G125, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 Time: Informal lunch with speaker, 12:30pm. Talk, 1:00pm. Title: Multi-scale Seizure Dynamics Abstract: Epilepsy--recurrent, unprovoked seizures--is a common brain disease, affecting 1% of the world’s population. Seizures are typically identified as abnormal patterns in brain voltage activity. Many open questions surround epilepsy and seizures, and identifying the answers promises new insights for treatment and prevention. In this talk, I will consider brain voltage activity during seizures as observed at multiple spatial scales. I will show how techniques from mathematics and statistics can be used to characterize these data, identify common features, and connect observed brain activity to mechanisms. One specific open question is this: Why do seizures spontaneously terminate? Analysis of human brain electrical activity at various spatial scales suggests a common dynamical mechanism: a discontinuous critical transition or bifurcation. Prolonged seizures (status epilepticus) repeatedly approach, but do not cross, the critical transition. I will consider a computational model to demonstrate that alternative stable attractors, representing the seizure and post-seizure states, emulate the observed brain dynamics. These results also suggest a dynamical understanding of status epilepticus. Seizure dynamics thus provide an accessible system for studying critical transitions in nature. Speaker bio: Mark Kramer received his PhD in applied physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. Following three years as a postdoctoral researcher, he was awarded a Career Award at the Scientific Interface from the Burroughs Welcome Fund. In 2009 he became an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Boston University. His research is focused on the application of ideas and techniques from mathematics and physics to problems in neuroscience, typically with clinical focus. He maintains numerous interdisciplinary collaborations with clinical, medical, and computational researchers throughout Boston and is always interested in new interdisciplinary research problems and approaches. Visit http://iacs.seas.harvard.edu/events to subscribe to our Google calendar, manage your subscription to this mailing list, or access video and audio recordings of previous seminars. _______________________________________________ Iacs-events mailing list Iacs-events(a)seas.harvard.edu https://lists.seas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/iacs-events