Seizure Prevention via Control of Neuronal Activity

通过控制神经元活动预防癫痫发作

• 批准号: G0701050/1
• 负责人: John Terry
• 金额: $ 39.92万
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2008 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=G0701050%2F1
• 关键词: Seizure; Prevention; via; Control; Neuronal

Epilepsy is a very common and serious disease. At the moment, about one third of people with epilepsy continue to have seizures despite taking the best tablet treatment available. A few can be treated successfully by removing part of the brain where seizures start, but for most people with epilepsy this is not an option. This means that we urgently need completely new treatments for epilepsy.Other kinds of brain disease (such as Parkinson s disease) can be very successfully treated using electrical stimulation of the brain. This involves inserting tiny wires into critical parts of the brain that go wrong in Parkinson s disease. Electrical current is then used to change the way these parts of the brain work, which has proved a highly successful treatment.In the brains of people with epilepsy, seizures arise only some of the time, and the rest of the time the brain is behaving normally. This means that we need to find a treatment approach that can keep the brain in the normal state and steer it back towards the normal state if it begins to drift towards a seizure. In this proposal, we aim to develop a technique to constantly measure whether the brain is in a stable normal state or is dirfting towards a seizure, and to deliver electrical stimulation to critical parts of the brain to keep things stable and stop seizures from arising. The electrical stimulation will change all the time depending on what the simultaneous measurement is telling us.We will develop this system using three parallel approaches. First of all, we will use computer predictions to work out likely ways this approach might work. We will then try out these methods in an expreimntal system. Alongside this, we will collect information from some of our patients to see if our ideas are likely to work in people with epilepsy.

癫痫是一种非常常见和严重的疾病。目前，约有三分之一的癫痫患者继续癫痫发作，尽管采取了最好的片剂治疗。少数人可以通过切除癫痫发作开始的部分大脑来成功治疗，但对于大多数癫痫患者来说，这不是一种选择。这意味着我们迫切需要全新的癫痫治疗方法。其他类型的脑部疾病（如帕金森氏病）可以通过对大脑进行电刺激来成功治疗。这涉及到将微小的电线插入大脑的关键部位，这些部位会在帕金森氏症中出错。癫痫病患者的大脑中，癫痫发作的频率很高，但癫痫患者的大脑中，癫痫发作的频率很高，而癫痫患者的大脑中，癫痫发作的频率很高，但癫痫发作的频率很低。这意味着我们需要找到一种治疗方法，可以保持大脑处于正常状态，并在它开始向癫痫发作漂移时将其引导回正常状态。在这项提案中，我们的目标是开发一种技术，不断测量大脑是否处于稳定的正常状态或正在朝着癫痫发作的方向发展，并向大脑的关键部位提供电刺激，以保持稳定并阻止癫痫发作。电刺激将根据同步测量告诉我们的信息而不断变化。我们将使用三种并行方法开发此系统。首先，我们将使用计算机预测来找出这种方法可能的工作方式。然后我们将在一个实验系统中尝试这些方法。除此之外，我们还将收集一些患者的信息，看看我们的想法是否可能对癫痫患者有效。