An apparatus for predicting an effect of a surgical strategy for treatment of epileptic seizures comprising a device for generating a brain network model representative of brain data, wherein nodes in the network model correspond to brain regions, and connections between the nodes correspond to connections between the brain regions. Synthetic brain activity data is generated in at least some of the nodes of the network model and a representative brain network ictogenicity (BNI) value is calculated from the synthetic brain activity data, wherein said BNI value is representative of a probability of said brain network to generate seizures. Surgical strategies are then simulated through the removal of at least one node and/or edge from said brain network and the resultant change in the BNI value is calculated for each surgical scenario. The surgical strategy resulting in the most improved seizure susceptibility measure can then be selected.