Unstable periodic orbits in human epileptic hippocampal slices.

Inter-ictal activity is studied in hippocampal slices resected from patients with epilepsy using local field potential recording. Inter-ictal activity in the dentate gyrus (DG) is induced by high-potassium (8 mM), low-magnesium (0.25 mM) aCSF with additional 100 μM 4-aminopyridine(4-AP). The dynamics of the inter-ictal activity is investigated by developing the first return map with inter-pulse intervals. Unstable periodic orbits (UPOs) are detected in the hippocampal slice at the DG area according to both the topological recurrence method and the periodic orbit transform method. Surrogate analysis suggests the presence of UPOs in hippocampal slices from patients with epilepsy. This finding also suggests that inter-ictal activity is a chaotic system and will allow us to apply chaos control techniques to manipulate inter-ictal activity.