Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, Vol. 15, Iss. 3, July, 2011, pp. 377-388 @2011 Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences Long-range Prediction of Epileptic Seizures with Nonlinear Dynamics Abstract: Patients with uncontrolled epilepsy have some significant problems
with planning life routines, and thus one goal of the present study was to
explore the viability of predicting seizures in time intervals of one week.
The second goal was to utilize the principle of dynamic diseases and to assess
the viability of a cusp catastrophe model for seizure onset that was proposed by
Cerf (2006). A seizure history of 124 weeks from one adult male patient fit both
the cusp and fold catastrophe models (R2 = .92 and .88 respectively) reasonably
well using the pdf method and more accurately than counterpart linear models.
Prediction of future states was possible, but somewhat compromised because of
the nonstationary nature of the data and uncertainties regarding the control variables
in the catastrophe models. Analyses of lag functions, however, revealed some
surprising elements, suggesting that the precursory conditions for a seizure
could be building up over a period of several weeks and that a self-correcting
effect within the nervous system could have been occurring. Keywords: epilepsy, cusp catastrophe, dynamical disease, patient management |