New Biomarkers May Improve Deep Brain Stimulation for Epilepsy

Source: Epilepsia

Summary

This study looked at patients with focal drug-resistant epilepsy who could not have surgery to remove their seizure-causing brain tissue. Researchers focused on a specific area of the brain called the medial pulvinar (PuM) and used a technique called stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG) to gather data from six patients. These patients underwent deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the PuM after SEEG showed they were not suitable for surgery.

The key finding of the study was that certain measures of brain activity, specifically entropy-based metrics, were linked to a positive response to DBS treatment. While other measures, like spike rates and connectivity, did not show a difference between patients who responded well to DBS and those who did not, the two patients who had a significant reduction in seizures had higher levels of complexity in their brain activity as measured by the permutation entropy index (PEI) and delta entropy (ΔE). This suggests that how chaotic or complex the brain signals are during seizures might help predict who will benefit from DBS.

Understanding these findings is important because they could help doctors identify which patients are more likely to respond to DBS, potentially improving treatment outcomes for those with difficult-to-treat epilepsy. However, the study had a small number of participants, so more research is needed to confirm these results and see if they apply to a larger group of patients.

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