From the MIT Technology Review comes word of a new approach to refractory epilepsy — using implantable probes to monitor, then shape, the electrical activity of the brain:
The same type of modeling used by meteorologists to forecast the weather could help scientists design better electrical-stimulation therapies for the brain. These therapies, which involve sending small jolts of electricity to specific neural targets, are currently in use for both Parkinson’s and epilepsy, two neurological diseases in which drugs have had limited success…
…The idea is that if scientists can accurately model the activity leading up to and during a seizure, they can use that model to test in real time the type of stimulation parameters that are most effective at preventing abnormal activity before it evolves into a full-blown seizure.
So far, Schiff’s team has been able to build models that replicate oscillating neural activity recorded from the cortex of rodents. And in a paper published earlier this year in the Journal of Neural Engineering, the researchers showed that they could control these virtual wave patterns, outlining a potential approach to controlling electrical activity via neural implants. The scientists are now trying to repeat the feat using dynamics of actual seizures recorded in the lab.
More from MIT Tech Review…
Abstract: Kalman filter control of a model of spatiotemporal cortical dynamics
More from Professor Schiff…
Medgadget’s vast epilepsy archives…
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