The epileptic encephalopathies (EE), also known as epilepsy syndromes, are severe seizure disorders that start in childhood. The seizures are often frequent and drug-resistant, and they are associated with progressive impairment of the child’s cognition. There are a number of different epileptic encephalopathies, including West Syndrome, Dravet Syndrome, Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, Doose Syndrome and Landau-Kleffner Syndrome…
The Brain Monitoring and Modulation group aims to develop approaches/technologies that monitor and change brain activity to stop seizures. Monitoring activities address the fundamental problem of how to localize and detect seizure activity using scalp electroencephalography (EEG) and intracranial EEG (iEEG). This theme includes both clinical and pre-clinical studies. Pre-clinical research studies include the development…
About 70% of epilepsies have a genetic basis. Some are single‐gene epilepsies, some have a polygenic etiology, while others have genetic modifying factors. So far, only 15% of genes associated with epilepsy have been identified. Thus, epilepsy is in large part a genetic disease, and future treatments for epilepsy could involve corrective genetic modification. Using…
Quality of life (QoL) refers to a person’s general sense of well-being and satisfaction. It is related to all emotional, social and physical aspects of a person’s life, all of which can be affected by epilepsy. Epilepsy is not just a seizure disorder, and people with epilepsy are at risk of having other health conditions…
For individuals with drug-resistant epilepsy, surgical treatment may be an option if seizures are well-localized to a specific brain region. The identification of this area, known as the “seizure focus”, is based primarily on EEG recordings when patients are on the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit. In mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE), seizures arise from the hippocampus…
For the 20-30% of children whose seizures cannot be controlled with medication, dietary therapy can improve both seizure control and quality of life. The ketogenic diet has been used to treat children with intractable epilepsy since 1921, when the original high fat, low carbohydrate protocol was created. The limited intake of carbohydrates triggers the body…