Epilepsy News

What to know about epilepsy and seizure first aid - November is Epilepsy Awareness Month. Many people may already be aware of the condition from its prevalence in medical dramas, but that portrayal is often exaggerated and does not fully encapsulate ...

Focal treatment-resistant epilepsy symptoms improved with antiseizure medication - Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on . Monthly seizure frequency percentage reduction was 68.73% for the entire study cohort. For those followed up in ...

Mental Wellness Month: How Neurofeedback Offers Drug-Free Relief for Anxiety and Brain Fog - Neurofeedback is a form of biofeedback that monitors brain activity through electroencephalography (EEG) and provides real-time visual or auditory feedback to patients. During sessions, individuals ...

New brain training study could help explain the placebo effect - Increasing activity in a deep-brain region can boost the immune system’s response to vaccines—and people can be trained to do it themselves using the power of brain scans and positive thinking, ...

Expecting Good Things Can Supercharge Your Immune System - In a first-of-its-kind human trial, researchers have demonstrated that consciously activating the brain’s reward system (when you’re anticipating something good happening) can significantly increase ...

Rewiring Your Brain: Neurofeedback Goes Mainstream - Will Strahl walked up to my door with a massive black briefcase in his hand, the kind you could use to tote a dirty bomb. Once inside my living room, he cracked open the case and removed a laptop, a ...

How Neurofeedback Can Help Troubled Couples Get Back on the Same Wavelength - Dr. David Helfand (left) with a patient. The cap contains 19 electrodes that measure the brain’s electrical activity. Credit: Courtesy When a 10-year romantic relationship ended last spring for ...

Investigation of the Antiepileptic and Anti-inflammatory Effects of Empagliflozin on Penicillin-induced Epileptiform Activity in Rats - CONCLUSION: Empagliflozin demonstrated anticonvulsant and anti-inflammatory effects by delaying seizure onset, reducing SWF, and modulating pro-inflammatory cytokine levels. These findings suggest that empagliflozin may have therapeutic potential in epilepsy through SGLT-2 inhibition.

Clinical Impact of Adjusted Valproic Acid Level in Patients with Hypoalbuminemia: A Single-Center Cohort Study - Valproic acid (VPA) is highly protein-bound, thereby impacting its free fraction and clearance in hypoalbuminemia. There is limited data on VPA use in such patients. Thus, this study evaluates the impact of adjusted VPA concentration (aVPAc) in predicting effectiveness and adverse effects compared to total VPA (tVPA) levels in hypoalbuminemic patients. A retrospective cohort study involved adul...

Human Mediodorsal Thalamus in Seizure Propagation - CONCLUSIONS: The thalamic MD subregion was often involved after the other thalamic sites, but the MD sites, along with the massa intermedia connecting the two thalami, were significantly involved when seizures spread to contralateral hemisphere. Our findings suggest that a single thalamic lead capturing both MD subregions may yield important clinical information about laterality, origin, and ge...

Identification of Additional Cases of Severe Neonatal GABA-Transaminase Deficiency - GABA-transaminase (GABA-T) deficiency is a rare disorder of GABA metabolism characterized by neonatal encephalopathy, epilepsy, hypotonia and intellectual disability. It is caused by biallelic pathogenic variants in the ABAT gene. We report a case of a newborn female born to a G10P5 mother, with abnormal fetal movements and polyhydramnios in utero. At birth, she presented with hypotonia, hypers...

Neuroinflammation in GAD65 Antibody-Associated Epilepsy Measured Using [(18)F]DPA-714 PET/MRI - The timing for initiating immunotherapy in patients with glutamic acid decarboxylase 65 (GAD65) antibody-associated epilepsy is a challenge. We used the translocator protein radioligand [^(18)F]DPA-714 and PET to evaluate brain microglial activation. [^(18)F]DPA-714 PET brain images of 11 patients with GAD65 antibody-associated epilepsy and seven controls were analyzed. Patients with acute symp...

Epilepsy phenotypes of Renu syndrome: Novel insights from a European multicentre retrospective cohort study - CONCLUSIONS: The phenotype of the seizure disorders observed in this cohort was dominated by focal impaired consciousness seizures with observable manifestations and a relatively favourable course of epilepsy.

Brain signal irregularity may provide clues to understanding epileptic process - Researchers propose a new method to differentiate signals from the epileptic focus from those recorded in other parts of the brain without the presence of an epileptic seizure. This technique may help detect epilepsy-induced features from these signals much quicker than conventional analysis techniques.

Breakthrough tech enables seizure localization in minutes - New research introduces a novel network analysis technology that uses minimally invasive resting state electrophysiological recordings to localize seizure onset brain regions and predict seizure outcomes in just 10 minutes.

Antidepressant use during pregnancy not linked to epilepsy in children - A new study suggests that antidepressant use by mothers during the first trimester of pregnancy does not increase the chances of epilepsy and seizures in babies.