ABSTRACT
The essential question as to what causes seizures to come and go remains unanswered. In 1988, Sackellares and Iasemidis initiated research to test the hypothesis that the transition from an interictal state to a seizure (ictal state) is similar to the state transitions that had been observed in chaotic systems (Iasemidis et al. 1988a, 1988b, 1990; Iasemidis and Sackellares 1990). In the course of these investigations, they found that the spatiotemporal patterns of the ictal states were consistently more ordered than that of the interictal and postictal states. Furthermore, there was a signi–cant change in measures of spatial order among EEG signals that precede seizures by periods on the order of an hour. Thus, by combining measures of temporal order, spatial order, and signal energy and frequency, it is possible to develop devices that can predict as well as detect seizures.
