@article{Aung_2026_NatCommun_Thalamo,
    abstract = {In drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (DR-TLE), some seizures are clinically symptomatic while others remain electrographic despite arising from the same seizure-onset zone (SOZ), suggesting that clinical expression reflects network dynamics beyond seizure origin. We examined whether thalamo-cortical network engagement differs between clinical (CS) and non-clinical seizures (NCS). We analyzed 286 seizures from 62 DR-TLE patients recorded using stereoelectroencephalography with pulvinar and/or anterior thalamic group coverage. Thalamo-cortical synchrony during the first 20 seconds of seizure onset was quantified as correlation between SEEG-derived time-frequency patterns in thalamic nuclei and the cortical SOZ. Synchrony was significantly stronger during CS than NCS (p < 0.0001, Cliff's delta > 0.6), including within-subject analyses, and was independent of other clinical variables, including postsurgical outcome. Linear mixed-effects modeling identified seizure type as the sole independent predictor of synchrony (p = 0.0069). These findings identify thalamo–cortical synchrony as a network-level feature associated with clinical seizure expression in DR-TLE.},
    author = {Aung, Thandar and Li, Jian and Tumnark, Tipakorn and Belly, Chandana and Thomas, John and Jaber, Kassem and Parikh, Prachi and Zafar, Muhammad and Southwell, Derek and Chauvel, Patrick and Frauscher, Birgit and Gonzalez-Martinez, Jorge},
    doi = {10.1038/s41467-026-73053-9},
    journal = {Nature Communications},
    publisher = {Springer Nature},
    title = {Thalamo-cortical synchrony shapes seizure expression in human temporal lobe epilepsy},
    year = {2026}
}