epilepsy tagged posts

American Amber Pearson used to wash her hands until they bled, terrified by the idea of contamination from everyday items, a debilitating result of her obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

But the repetitive rituals of her condition are largely consigned to memory, thanks to a revolutionary brain implant that is being used to treat both her epilepsy and her OCD.

“I’m actually present in my daily life and that’s incredible,” the 34-year-old told AFP.

“Before, I was just constantly in my head worrying about my compulsions.”

Brain implants have hit the headlines recently with Elon Musk’s announcement that his Neuralink company had placed a chip in a pat...

An artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that can detect subtle brain abnormalities that cause epileptic seizures has been developed by a UCL-led team of international researchers.

The Multicentre Epilepsy Lesion Detection project (MELD) used over 1,000 patient MRI scans from 22 global epilepsy centers to develop the algorithm, which provides reports of where abnormalities are in cases of drug-resistant focal cortical dysplasia (FCD)—a leading cause of epilepsy.

FCDs are areas of the brain that have developed abnormally and often cause drug-resistant epilepsy. The condition is typically treated with surgery, however identifying the lesions from an MRI is an ongoing challenge for clinicians, as MRI scans in FCDs can look normal.

To develop t...

A new study found patterns could be identified in patients who wear a special wristwatch monitoring device for six to 12 months, allowing about 30 minutes of warning before a seizure occurred. This worked well most of the time for five of six patients studied.

Despite medications, surgery and neurostimulation devices, many people with epilepsy continue to have seizures. The unpredictable nature of seizures is severely limiting. If seizures could be reliably forecast, people with epilepsy could alter their activities, take a fast-acting medication or turn up their neurostimulator to prevent a seizure or minimize its effects.

A new study in Scientific Reports by Mayo Clinic researchers and international collaborators found patterns could be identified in patients who wear a specia...

Certain anchor proteins inhibit a key metabolic driver that plays an important role in cancer and developmental brain disorders. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the University of Innsbruck, together with a Europe-wide research network, discovered this molecular mechanism, which could open up new opportunities for personalized therapies for cancer and neuronal diseases. They published their results in the journal Cell.

The signaling protein MTOR (Mechanistic Target of Rapamycin) is a sensor for nutrients such as amino acids and sugars. When sufficient nutrients are available, MTOR boosts metabolism and ensures that sufficient energy and cellular building blocks are available...