"Acute hepatic encephalopathy (AHE) due to acute liver failure is a common form of delirium, a state of confusion, impaired attention, and decreased arousal. The electroencephalogram (EEG) in AHE often exhibits a striking abnormal pattern of brain activity, which epileptiform discharges repeat in a regular repeating pattern. This pattern is known as generalized periodic discharges, or triphasic-waves (TPWs). While much is known about the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying AHE, how these mechanisms relate to TPWs is poorly understood. In order to develop hypotheses how TPWs arise, our work builds a computational model of AHE (AHE-CM), based on three modifications of the well-studied Liley model which emulate mechanisms believed central to brain dysfunction in AHE: increased neuronal excitability, impaired synaptic transmission, and enhanced postsynaptic inhibition..."
Model Concept(s): Acute hepatic encephalopathy (AHE); Temporal Pattern Generation; Simplified Models; Parameter Fitting
Simulation Environment: MATLAB (web link to model)
Implementer(s): Song, Jiang-Ling
References:
Song JL et al. (2019). A novel neural computational model of generalized periodic discharges in acute hepatic encephalopathy. Journal of computational neuroscience. 47 [PubMed]