Personalized Contingent Neurostimulation for Epilepsy by Machine Learning in Organic Brain Interfaces

癫痫是一种慢性神经系统疾病，以不可预测的、致残的癫痫发作为特征。这种毁灭性的疾病使死亡率增加4倍，抑郁症增加2倍。不幸的是，癫痫非常常见，每100人中就有1人受到影响，在33%的病例中，药物无法防止癫痫发作。一种帮助此类抗药性癫痫患者的新兴技术是应急神经刺激设备。这些装置被植入患者体内，这样它们就可以检测癫痫样活动，并电刺激神经系统防止/终止癫痫发作。最近，两种商业应急神经刺激剂已被批准用于治疗癫痫。事实证明，这些设备在减少癫痫发作活动方面取得了成功，但它们的效果很低。尤其是，它们不太可能产生癫痫自由，而癫痫自由是恢复患者独立性和生活质量所必需的。现有神经刺激设备取得如此有限成功的主要原因是：(A)它们使用的基本电极(稀疏和大)与大脑的接口很差，以及(B)由于植入物的能量限制，它们在癫痫检测和堕胎能力方面极其简单。我们建议结合(A)我们合作伙伴Panaxium的优越的大脑接口电极技术和(B)我们使用人工智能进行最佳癫痫预测和预防的能效最高的植入式电子电路，以极大地提高神经调制疗法对顽固性癫痫的无癫痫发作的疗效。我们的团队是唯一有资格参与该项目的人。它由一位低功率生物医学和计算电子专家(Genov)、一位癫痫神经外科医生和一位脑神经生理学专家(Valiante)领导，以及Panaxium技术商业化领导者和一位有20年行业经验的老手(Weinroth)领导。

Epilepsy is a chronic, neurological condition characterized by unpredictable, disablingseizures. This devastating disorder increases mortality by 4 times and depression by 2 timespopulation rates. Unfortunately, epilepsy is extremely common, affecting 1 in 100 people, andin 33% of cases, medications do not prevent seizures. An emerging technology to aid suchpatients with drug-resistant epilepsy is contingent neurostimulation devices. These devicesare implanted in a patient so that they can detect epileptiform activity and electrically stimulatethe nervous system to prevent/abort seizures. Recently, two commercial contingentneurostimulators have been approved for treating epilepsy. These devices have provensuccessful at reducing seizure activity, however their efficacy is low. In particular, they arevery unlikely to produce seizure freedom, which is necessary to restore patient independenceand quality of life.The primary reasons why existing neurostimulation devices have had such limited successare that: (a) they use rudimentary (sparse and large) electrodes that poorly interface with thebrain and (b) they are extremely simplistic in their seizure detection and abortion capabilitiesdue to the use of basic electronics as constrained by energy limitations of an implant. Wepropose to combine (a) the far superior brain-interfacing electrode technology from ourpartner Panaxium and (b) our energy-efficient state-of-the-art implantable electronic circuitsthat employ artificial intelligence for optimal seizure prediction and prevention - to greatlyimprove the seizure-freedom efficacy of the neuromodulation therapy for intractable epilepsy.Our team is uniquely well qualified for this project. It is led by an expert in low-powerbiomedical and computational electronics (Genov), an epilepsy neurosurgeon and an expertin brain neurophysiology (Valiante), and Panaxiums Technology Commercialization Leaderand a 20-year industry veteran (Weinroth).