Imaging fast electrical activity in the brain during ictal epileptiform discharges with electrical impedance tomography

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) is an emerging medical imaging technique which can produce tomographic images of internal impedance changes within an object using non-penetrating surface electrodes. It has previously been used to image impedance changes due to neuronal depolarisation during evoked potentials in the rat somatosensory cortex with a resolution of 2 ms and <200 μm, using an epicortical electrode array. The purpose of this work was to use this technique to elucidate the intracortical spatiotemporal trajectory of ictal spike-and-wave discharges (SWDs), induced by electrical stimulation in an acute rat model of epilepsy, throughout the cerebral cortex. Seizures lasting 16.5 ± 5.3 s with repetitive 2–5 Hz SWDs were induced in five rats anaesthetised with fentanyl-isoflurane. Transfer impedance measurements were obtained during each seizure with a 57-electrode epicortical array by applying 50 μA current at 1.7 kHz to two electrodes and recording voltages from all remaining electrodes. Images were reconstructed from averaged SWD-related impedance traces obtained from EIT measurements in successive seizures. We report the occurrence of reproducible impedance changes during the initial spike phase, which had an early onset in the whisker barrel cortex and spread posteriorly, laterally and ventrally over 20 ms (p < 0.03125, N = 5). These findings, which confirm and extend knowledge of SWD initiation and expression, suggest that EIT is a valuable neuroimaging tool for improving understanding of neural circuits implicated in epileptic phenomena.