Vagus nerve electroneurogram for seizure detection in the acute Pentylenetetrazol model in rats

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is an established treatment for drug resistant epilepsy (DRE), which affects about 30% of epilepsy patients. On-demand triggering of VNS is known to improve its efficacy in DRE. Automatic on-demand VNS needs an effective and reliable seizure detection method. As seizures are commonly associated with autonomic manifestations and the vagus nerve carries parasympathetic and sensory information from and to the viscera we hypnotize that seizure biomarker can be recorded from vagus nerve electroneurogram (VENG) recording. In this thesis we established a method to reliably record VENG signals in anesthetized animals during acute pentylenetetrazol induced seizures and confirmed the neural origin of those signals. Furthermore, we confirmed the existence of seizure related signals in the VENG recording and developed a seizure detection method based on them.