06 Apr 2009 06:00 AM
Doctors, And A Special Patient, Use New Imaging Tools To Document How A Seizure Travels Through The Labyrinth Of The Brain
For the millions of people who suffer from epilepsy, what is going on in Jeff Nelson's brain might be a map to freedom.
Twice now, Nelson has come to Stanford Hospital & Clinics to undergo long hours of testing. First, he sits patiently while neuroscientists attach electrical cables to a special hat he wears during testing. It takes some time-the cables are as plentiful as blades of grass sprouting from a well-sown lawn. Then, into the narrow tunnel of the MRI he goes. The wires gauge his brain's electrical pulses, sending the data as an electroencephalogram-an EEG. The MRI records changes in blood flow in his brain.
Stanford is one of just a few places in the world with the technology to correlate the information from the EEG and the MRI. The combination of the two forms of seizure observation allows Stanford physicians to see something previously very elusive: the real time interaction between the brain's architecture and the electrical abnormalities that spark epileptic seizures.
Nelson is here because he has a special kind of epilepsy. Instead of being random, unpredictable occurrences, reflex epilepsy's seizures happen after exposure to a certain sight, smell, or sound. Those known triggers enable Nelson's physicians at Stanford to produce and then observe a seizure, capturing valuable data. The analysis of what goes on in Nelson's brain during a seizure is building a behavioral diagram that will one day guide a less invasive, less risky and more permanent treatment for epilepsy.
"We know that seizures do not affect single centers in the brain," said Josef Parvizi, MD, PhD, a neurology specialist with the Stanford Comprehensive Epilepsy Clinic who leads the team of investigators studying Nelson's brain. "Instead, the excess electrical activity that produces a seizure travels on a network whose pathways range over several areas of the brain. Being able to interrupt, very specifically, the seizure network's connections and pathways, is the treatment goalî şand an alternative to brain surgery."
"Saying seizures start in one place is a simplification because our trillions of brain cells are interconnected," said Epilepsy Center Director Robert Fisher, MD…
Twice now, Nelson has come to Stanford Hospital & Clinics to undergo long hours of testing. First, he sits patiently while neuroscientists attach electrical cables to a special hat he wears during testing. It takes some time-the cables are as plentiful as blades of grass sprouting from a well-sown lawn. Then, into the narrow tunnel of the MRI he goes. The wires gauge his brain's electrical pulses, sending the data as an electroencephalogram-an EEG. The MRI records changes in blood flow in his brain.
Stanford is one of just a few places in the world with the technology to correlate the information from the EEG and the MRI. The combination of the two forms of seizure observation allows Stanford physicians to see something previously very elusive: the real time interaction between the brain's architecture and the electrical abnormalities that spark epileptic seizures.
Nelson is here because he has a special kind of epilepsy. Instead of being random, unpredictable occurrences, reflex epilepsy's seizures happen after exposure to a certain sight, smell, or sound. Those known triggers enable Nelson's physicians at Stanford to produce and then observe a seizure, capturing valuable data. The analysis of what goes on in Nelson's brain during a seizure is building a behavioral diagram that will one day guide a less invasive, less risky and more permanent treatment for epilepsy.
"We know that seizures do not affect single centers in the brain," said Josef Parvizi, MD, PhD, a neurology specialist with the Stanford Comprehensive Epilepsy Clinic who leads the team of investigators studying Nelson's brain. "Instead, the excess electrical activity that produces a seizure travels on a network whose pathways range over several areas of the brain. Being able to interrupt, very specifically, the seizure network's connections and pathways, is the treatment goalî şand an alternative to brain surgery."
"Saying seizures start in one place is a simplification because our trillions of brain cells are interconnected," said Epilepsy Center Director Robert Fisher, MD…
