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Individual structural connectivity defines propagation networks in partial epilepsy

Neural network oscillations are a fundamental mechanism for cognition, perception and consciousness. Consequently, perturbations of network activity play an important role in the pathophysiology of brain disorders. When structural information from non-invasive brain imaging is merged with mathematical modeling, then generative brain network models constitute in-silico platforms for the exploration of causal mechanisms of brain function and clinical hypothesis testing. We here demonstrate along the example of drug-resistant epilepsy that patient-specific virtual brain models derived from diffusion MRI have sufficient predictive power to improve diagnosis and surgery outcome. In partial epilepsy, seizures originate in a local network, the so-called epileptogenic zone, before recruiting other close or distant brain regions. We create personalized large-scale brain networks for 15 patients and simulate the individual seizure propagation patterns. Model validation is performed against the presurgical stereotactic electroencephalography (SEEG) data and the standard-of-care clinical evaluation. We demonstrate that the individual brain models account for the temporal variability in patient seizure propagation patterns and explain the variability in postsurgical success. Our results show that individual variations in structural connectivity, when linked with mathematical dynamic models, have the capacity to explain changes in spatiotemporal organization of brain dynamics as observed in network-based brain disorders, thus opening up avenues towards discovery of novel clinical interventions.