TBT teaser: What the Brain Is Already Telling Us: Computational Brain Mapping to Transform Epilepsy Care

Late Breaking: Congratulations to HBM fellow Dr. Bola Eldoqsh on the acceptance of his 1/f EEG study as a late-breaking abstract at AES 2026! Provisional running title: 1/f EEG in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and PNES. Among other findings, median 1/f estimates from one-minute EEG segments strongly correlated with estimates from full-duration EEG recordings, r ≈ 0.93 for the aperiodic exponent. A step in the right direction toward more efficient EEG analysis and optimizing epilepsy practice through computational signal processing and AI. #AES2026 #PNES

Some count. Some hurt. Some repeat. We grow. We love. Life comes full circle. Let growth and love be what we leave behind.

Cigdem is on a roll. After her recent NEST faculty work at Cleveland Clinic, there is another reason to celebrate: Dr. Cigdem Isitan-Alkawadri’s nomination for the Allegheny County Medical Society’s 2026 Ralph C. Wilde Leadership Award. I have cared for many patients alongside Cigdem, and I can attest to how highly they speak of her. Amid a busy clinical schedule and life’s ups and downs, recognition from a colleague means a great deal. Congratulations, Cigdem, and thank you to Dr. Holly Appleberry for the nomination. Well deserved.

Exploring a few concepts for the next chapter. None feels quite right yet.

Normal has a signature; Abnormal is an aberration. Our pending 2026 review, Benign and Physiologic Variants on Intracranial Electroencephalography, revisits a principle behind our earlier work. Our 2014 study came amid growing enthusiasm for high-frequency oscillations (HFOs) as epilepsy biomarkers. We challenged the fixation on treating them as pathological by definition: across 1,209 intracranial contacts in seven epilepsy patients, 82% of detected HFOs occurred at contacts classified nonepileptic. We urged studying how physiological HFO-generating regions behave when they overlap the epileptic network. The question was which features distinguish the aberration—not simply whether an HFO is present. Subsequent studies added discriminating context: slow-wave coupling (2016), regional HFO rates (2018), and EEG background (2020). Our pending review brings that sequence into a broader account of physiological and benign intracranial patterns. A signal class is not a diagnosis.