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Brain activity patterns predicted seizure risk in people with focal epilepsy a day or more in advance, a feasibility study showed.
Models that incorporated multiple days of interictal epileptiform activity spikes and similar EEG patterns that occur between seizures generated forecasts for the next calendar day with above-chance accuracy in 83% of a development cohort and 66% of a validation cohort, reported Maxime Baud, MD, PhD, of the University of Bern in Switzerland, and co-authors in the
These forecasts could be extended to 3 days with above-chance accuracy in 11% of the development group and 39% of the validation group. Forecasts with a horizon of only 1 hour, which could be determined only in the development cohort, had above-chance accuracy in 100% of patients.
Researchers develop a technique to predict epileptic seizures
A third of epilepsy sufferers are resistant to treatment for this neurological disease that affects 1% of the population. The onset of seizures is unpredictable, and has been the subject of fruitless research since the 1970s. The unforeseeable nature of the disease means patients are forced to take medication and / or adjust their lifestyles.
Neuroscientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University Hospital of Bern (Inselspital) - working with the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) and Brown University in Providence - have succeeded in developing a technique that can predict seizures between one and several days in advance. By recording neuronal activity over at least six months using a device implanted directly in the brain, it is possible to detect individual cycles of epileptic activity and provide information about the probability of a future seizure. This approach, published in the jour
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Patterns of brain activity can be used to forecast seizure risk in epilepsy patients several days in advance, according to a new analysis of data obtained from clinically approved brain implants by neuroscientists at UC San Francisco, the University of Bern, and the University of Geneva. For forty years, efforts to predict seizures have focused on developing early warning systems, which at best could give patients warnings just a few seconds or minutes in advance of a seizure. This is the first time anyone has been able to forecast seizures reliably several days in advance, which could really allow people to start planning their lives around when they re at high or low risk, said Vikram Rao, MD, PhD, a neurologist at the UCSF Epilepsy Center, part of the UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights. Rao was co-senior author of the new study, which was published December 17, 2020 in
Credit: Me?lanie Proix
Patterns of brain activity can be used to forecast seizure risk in epilepsy patients several days in advance, according to a new analysis of data obtained from clinically approved brain implants by neuroscientists at UC San Francisco, the University of Bern, and the University of Geneva. For forty years, efforts to predict seizures have focused on developing early warning systems, which at best could give patients warnings just a few seconds or minutes in advance of a seizure. This is the first time anyone has been able to forecast seizures reliably several days in advance, which could really allow people to start planning their lives around when they re at high or low risk, said Vikram Rao, MD, PhD, a neurologist at the UCSF Epilepsy Center, part of the UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights. Rao was co-senior author of the new study, which was published December 17, 2020 in