Multifractal Analysis of Intracranial EEG in Epilepticus Rats

Networks of living neurons exhibit diverse patterns of activity, which are always operating far from equilibrium in the mammalian central nervous system. In this study, a blocker of glutamate transporter was employed to detect if nonlinear interactions changed when extra glutamate acted as a potent neurotoxin to neural activity in hippocampus of epileptic Wistar rats. A hypothesis was made that a decrease of complexity of information could be occurred by accumulation of glutamate in hippocampus. An investigation was performed to measure intracranial EEG, which were obtained from two parts of brain in three rat’s groups, by using multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis. The results demonstrate that the change of nonlinear interactions in neural network can be clearly detected by multifractal analysis. Moreover, small fluctuation in activity of network exhibited a decrease in multifractal behavior, suggested that the complexity of information transmitting and storing in brain network was weakened by glutamate accumulation.