A persistent brain condition called epilepsy is marked by recurring seizures. Drug-refractory individuals, or those who do not react to medication, make up about 30% of the epilepsy population. Temporal lobectomy of the epileptogenic zone can reduce or eliminate symptoms, but not all patients are candidates for surgical resection, and neurological damage sustained during surgery can result in motor paralysis or speech impairment. As a result, there is an urgent need for a new, effective treatment.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has recently been made available as an alternative to surgery for persistent epilepsy. With the use of the cutting-edge medical technique known as DBS, electrodes are implanted deep into the brain to stimulate the area that causes seizures. It can lessen both the intensity and frequency of seizures by more than 70%.
Conventional DBS, on the other hand, administered stimuli uniformly and failed to reflect distinct brain areas. As a result, stimuli that were administered widely diffuse outside of the target tissues, producing unpleasant side effects such increased depression and discomfort. Also, it had the drawback of reducing battery life.
The combined team suggested using sequential narrow-field (SNF) stimulation in a rat model to get around these problems. The hippocampus is big and extended and serves as the primary seizure site in those with temporal lobe epilepsy. The sensors recognise when the hippocampus experiences a seizure and concentrate low-intensity stimulation energy there only.
The SNF stimulation created in this work reliably predicts when seizures will start, promptly reduces symptoms, and solely stimulates the target region of the hippocampus without stimulating nearby brain tissues. For this, SNF stimulation holds potential as a bioelectronic medical treatment that is less risky and more efficient than traditional DBS techniques, and that can be used to treat various neurological conditions.
The director of the Samsung Medical Center's Biomedical Engineering Research Center, Professor Young-Min Shon (Department of Neurology), stated that "This technology may be easily applied clinically and promises to become an optimal treatment for intractable epilepsy in the future."
Professor Sung-Min Park, the study's principal investigator, said the following about the study's significance: "This research, which is titled "future convergence medical solution research," shows how engineering and medicine can converge in the field of high-level brain stimulation to create more precise and individualised medical devices. Thanks to the partnership with Samsung Medical Center, it is a very useful engineering-based medical solution that is clinically usable."
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