Understanding exactly how seizures start
is important in two ways: firstly, to develop
warning system for people with active epilepsy,
to alert them in good time when a seizure
is about to happen; and secondly, to develop
a treatment method that targets the very
first stages of a seizure, ideally stopping
it before it develops very far.
Epilepsy Research UK (and previously Epilepsy
Research Foundation) have been long-standing
supporters of a group of researchers at
the University of Birmingham who are investigating
a particular pattern of electrical activity
that occurs right at the beginning of a
seizure, just at the point where normal
brain activity changes to seizure activity.
This important pattern consists of clumps
of very fast spikes of electrical current,
with about 200 spikes per second. Each individual
spike is caused by a tiny group of neurones
firing together. Collections of these firing
groups (called neuronal clusters) generate
the whole pattern. This pattern is part
of how a seizure begins, and also appears
to be involved in the development of epilepsy
itself.
Having studied this feature of seizures
in slices of brain in a laboratory, first
with communication between cells blocked,
then with it intact, Dr Premysl Jiruska
will now investigate it in live subjects
using implanted EEG electrodes. He has been
awarded the eighth Sir Desmond Pond Fellowship
to look at High-frequency activity and
transition to seizure in experimental temporal
lobe epilepsy. This prestigious award,
of £191,468 over 36 months,
will allow him to apply the same sophisticated
computer analysis techniques developed in
the previous projects to look at the development
of epilepsy and the build-up to seizures
in the latest most realistic model.
