Electrodes designed to collect research data while also locating epileptic seizures in the brain perform about as well as electrodes designed solely to locate seizures, according to Rutgers and UCLA researchers. “The finding could increase the usage of these electrodes, which provide valuable information about how the brain works,” said Yasunori Nagahama, director of pediatric epilepsy surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and lead author of a new study published in the Journal of Neurosurgery. “More information could improve treatment of epilepsy and other conditions.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 3.4 million Americans have epilepsy (recurrent seizures), and about a third of them get little relief from medication. Surgery can reduce or eliminate seizures — if surgeons can determine precisely where the seizures originate. Surgeons often seek the faulty tissue by placing electrodes into the brain and leaving them, often for weeks on end, to collect seizure data. To read the full story.