Interictal discharges in the human brain are traveling waves arising from an epileptogenic source.

While seizure activity may be electrographically widespread, increasing evidence has suggested that ictal discharges may in fact represent traveling waves propagated from a focal seizure source. Interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) are an electrographic manifestation of excessive hypersynchronization of cortical activity that occur between seizures, and are considered a marker of potentially epileptogenic tissue. The precise relationship between brain regions demonstrating IEDs and those involved in seizure onset, however, remains poorly understood. Here, we hypothesize that IEDs likewise reflect the receipt of traveling waves propagated from the same regions which give rise to seizures. 40 patients from our institution who underwent invasive monitoring for epilepsy, proceeded to surgery, and had at least one year of follow-up were included in our study. Interictal epileptiform discharges were detected using custom software, validated by a clinical epileptologist. We show that IEDs reach electrodes in sequences with a consistent temporal ordering, and this ordering matches the timing of receipt of ictal discharges, suggesting that both types of discharges spread as traveling waves. We use a novel approach for localization of ictal discharges, in which time differences of discharge receipt at nearby electrodes are used to compute source location; similar algorithms have been used in acoustics and geophysics. We find that interictal discharges co-localize with ictal discharges. Moreover, interictal discharges tend to localize to the resection territory in patients with good surgical outcome and outside of the resection territory in patients with poor outcome. The seizure source may originate at, and also travel to, spatially-distinct IED foci. Our data provide evidence that interictal discharges may represent traveling waves of pathological activity that are similar to their ictal counterparts, and that both ictal and interictal discharges emerge from common epileptogenic brain regions. Our findings have important clinical implications, as they suggest that seizure source localizations may be derived from interictal discharges, which are much more frequent than seizures.