NEWS
MEMORY: Seven Universities Working to Develop New Technologies
UT Southwestern Medical Center has joined a consortium of seven leading universities to develop new technologies to improve memory in people with traumatic brain injury, mild cognitive impairment, epilepsy, and Alzheimer's disease. Specifically, UT Southwestern is...
Extreme events in the brain
How do epileptic seizures develop? A new model from the universities of Bonn and Oldenburg may help to answer this question. Physicists at the Universities of Bonn and Oldenburg have developed a model whose behavior - although based on strict rules - can apparently...
New drug shows promise against Huntington’s disease
A drug that would be the first to target the cause of Huntington's disease (HD) is effective and safe when tested in mice and monkeys, according to data released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 68th Annual Meeting in Vancouver,...
Another App for epilepsy self-monitoring has been launched
A collaboration between clinicians, the NHS and epilepsy charity SUDEP Action today comes to fruition with the launch of a new smartphone app. The app is designed to help you monitor your own epilepsy The smartphone app is called the Epilepsy Self Monitor – or EpSMon....
Lamotrigine Monotherapy in Epilepsy: What’s the Optimal Dose?
A new study analysis suggests that for patients taking the antiepileptic drug (AED) lamotrigine as monotherapy, escalating dosage from the start of treatment may result in better efficacy. Up until now, the optimal dose of lamotrigine, when given as monotherapy, had...
Gene Therapy for Alzheimer’s
Experts at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine are leading the second arm of a clinical trial using gene therapy to relieve the symptoms of tremor and mobility impairment in patients with Parkinson's disease. The technique shows promise in prolonging the...
Experimental drug candidate may aid traumatic brain injury patients
A new report by University of Kentucky researcher Linda Van Eldik, PhD, describes an experimental drug candidate that may aid patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The article appeared this week in the journal PLoS One, the world's largest biology journal....
FDA-funded study supports generic substitution of epilepsy drugs
We posted an article on this earlier and had questions on who did the study. Here is your answer. Are all generic drugs created alike? That’s a question that patients, doctors, and pharmacists have debated for years, when weighing whether to shift patients from name...
Scientists find new potential treatment for absence seizures
Researchers from Cardiff University have discovered an exciting new approach to the treatment of absence seizures. Professor Vincenzo Crunelli and Professor Guiseppe Di Giovanni worked together to find a potential new type of treatment for absence seizures involving...
No change in epilepsy incidence in younger patients, increase among elderly
There appears to have been no change in the incidence of epilepsy in patients younger than 65 over the past 40 years in Finland but an increased incidence among older patients, which a new study suggests means no progress in preventing new cases of epilepsy, according...
Generics Compared Against Each Other, No Difference Found
Study confirms no detectable difference when switching between generics While approved generics are required to be equivalent to their brand-named counterparts in terms of active ingredients, some may wonder if a switch between generics could cause problems for...
Hospital makes history: Cannabis oil helps baby’s seizures
Two-month-old Amylea Nunez made history at a Colorado hospital last week when she became the first patient there to receive cannabis oil as part of her treatment. You see, little Amylea has spent the majority of her life inside a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU.)...
Researchers study the link between malformations of the cerebral cortex and the occurrence of the neurological disease.
Why does a structural irregularity in the temporal lobe make humans more susceptible to epileptic seizures? Experts have been searching for the answer to this question for a long time. A group of scientists at the Freiburg University Medical Center consisting of...
Brain formation pattern shows why early trauma may leave no clues
Some of the earliest nerve cells to develop in the womb shape brain circuits that process sights and sounds, but then give way to mature networks that convert this sensory information into thoughts. This is the finding of a study led by researchers at NYU Langone...
AES releases new guideline to help physicians treat status epilepticus patients effectively
Status epilepticus - continuous or rapid sequential seizure activity for 30 minutes or more - is a medical emergency with a high mortality rate in both children and adults. Prompt and effective treatment is key; therefore the American Epilepsy Society (AES) has...
15 things you only know if you have epilepsy
I was diagnosed with epilepsy out of the blue at the age of 21 during my final year at university. It changed my life dramatically over night and seizures continue to interrupt my life regularly. But it hasn’t stopped me from always seeking new challenges including...
BRAIN TECH: Carbon Electrodes Proven to Be Safe Brain Implants
Researchers have successfully demonstrated how it is possible to interface graphene - a two-dimensional form of carbon - with neurons, or nerve cells, while maintaining the integrity of these vital cells. The work may be used to build graphene-based electrodes that...
Does medical marijuana oil work?
The medical marijuana oil study ongoing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is showing near across-the-board reductions in seizures for its patients. Dr. Jerzy Szaflarski, head of the Division of Epilepsy at UAB and one of the principal investigators in the CBD...
New computational techniques could help researchers pinpoint anatomical source of seizures
For the third of all epilepsy patients who don't respond to medication, an alternative is to locate the small cluster of neurons that act as the seed of a seizure's aberrant electrical activity and surgically remove it. Unfortunately, such surgeries often fail to...
A Standardized Diagnostic Approach and Ongoing Feedback Improves Outcome in Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures
Nonepileptic events, or seizures that are not caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain, are frequently misunderstood. Psychogenic nonepileptic events or seizures (PNES) is the term used most often to describe events that are not epilepsy and are thought to...
