Emerging Technologies and Epilepsy

For people with ongoing seizures despite available therapies, new developments in both medications and medical devices offer hope.

With generous support from the Epilepsy Therapy Project, the CIMIT NeuroTechnology Program and the Neurotechnology Industry Organization co-sponsored a unique and exciting Epilepsy Innovation Summit in Boston on Wednesday May 7, 2008 that focused on new devices for epilepsy.

The Summit brought together nearly 80 epilepsy clinicians, scientists, engineers, and scientist/founders of epilepsy-related device companies from around the United States to discuss the current state-of-the-art of neurotechnology in four specific areas of epilepsy diagnosis and treatment, and to map out directions for future development, some of which will likely result from new collaborations that develop out of the Summit.

The four areas discussed at the Summit were:

• Evaluation for epilepsy surgery (including functional localization/mapping, and localization of seizure onset and spread)
• Predicting and detecting seizure onset (including methods based on electrophysiology, blood flow, cortical excitability, movement detection and video monitoring)
• Intracranial device-based treatment systems (including methods for cooling, drug delivery, convection-enhanced drug delivery, electrical stimulation, and light stimulation, as well as related algorithms)
• Extracranial device-based treatment systems (including transcranial direct current stimulation, trigeminal nerve stimulation, and vagus nerve stimulation, as well as related algorithms)

Among the many technologies discussed were magnetoencephalography, nanoparticles, SPECT scans, diffusion tensor imaging and tractography, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, near infrared spectroscopy, algorithms for seizure prediction, diffuse optical imaging, hybrid intracranial EEG electrodes, systems for delivering drugs directly into the brain, direct brain electrical stimulation systems, a brain cooling device, transcutaneous direct current stimulation, and transcutaneous magnetic stimulation.

Based on the success of this program, plans are underway to schedule the Second Epilepsy Innovation Summit in two years.

If you’d like to learn more about neurotechnology, see http://www.cimit.org/neurotech.html and http://www.neurotechindustry.org/.

Submitted on June 30, 2008
Edited by Steven C. Schachter, MD