Age of epilepsy onset, AED use, and level of anaesthesia during surgery must be considered as possible confounders in this study regarding functional connectivity, as these factors were correlated with both epilepsy duration and functional connectivity. However, the found correlation remained a significant result after Bonferroni correction, indicating that the result was robust and was not explained by multiple testing. Age of onset was not correlated with network characteristics (C, L, and S). Likewise, AED use and level of anaesthesia during surgery were related to synchronization, but not to network configuration measures. These findings show that network characteristics, although based on functional connectivity, measure different functional properties. Lesion volumes were not available and were therefore not included in our analysis.
