A Complex Systems Approach to Epilepsy: Concept, Practice, and Therapy

The epilepsies are devastating neurological disorders for which progress developing effective new therapies has slowed over recent decades, primarily due to the complexity of the brain at all scales. This reality has shifted the focus of experimental and clinical practice toward complex systems approaches to overcoming current barriers. Organized by scale from genes to whole brain, the chapters of this book survey the theoretical underpinnings and use of network and dynamical systems approaches to interpreting and modeling experimental and clinical data in epilepsy. The emphasis throughout is on the value of the non-trivial, and often counterintuitive, properties of complex systems, and how to leverage these properties to elaborate mechanisms of epilepsy and develop new therapies. In this essential book, readers will learn key concepts of complex systems theory applied across multiple scales and how each of these scales connects to epilepsy.

• Combines theoretical and experimental descriptions across chapters, providing insight into how to apply complex systems approaches to biological processes in epilepsy.
• Emphasizes therapeutic opportunities that arise from complex systems thinking, offering provocative hypotheses about how to expand therapies beyond the current treatment options.
• Explores a complex systems approach across multiple scales, from molecular to the whole brain, giving readers insight into the common features of networks.