In honor of Epilepsy Awareness Month we wanted to highlight some of our epilepsy work!
The NIH funded study is looking at patients with epilepsy who have DBS electrodes in the anterior nucleus of thalamus. These are people who have epilepsy that can't be controlled with medications and are not candidates for a surgical resection. Neuromodulation is effective at reducing seizures but not completely eliminating seizures which is always the goal. MnDRIVE Neuromodulation scholar, Dr. Bob McGovern III and his team are recording from the DBS electrodes within the thalamus and looking for signals that can help direct the stimulation parameters (amplitude, frequency, pulse width). One of the main findings they have encountered so far is that patients who respond better to the stimulation (>50% reduction in seizure frequency) have a spike in activity in a very specific frequency band (30-50 Hz) called the low gamma (or slow gamma) band. Moreover, patients who respond better to the stimulation show reduction in power in this frequency band with stimulation whereas the one patient who does have this slow gamma peak but does not show reduction in power has not benefited much from the DBS. These results are being published in a manuscript that is under review right now at Science: Translational Medicine.
