Epilepsy surgery outcomes can be predicted by brain connectivity

A group of researchers from Case Western Reserve and Cleveland Clinic is trying to improve the symptoms of epilepsy through surgery. Now a new and accurate way which was discovered by Roberto Fernández Galán, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neurosciences and collaborators can identify the exact areas of the brain that are affected by this disease. This new way can help patients to find out if surgery would be helpful or not. Galán is also the senior author of this study which is published in the journal PLOS ONE. Galán, in collaboration with investigators from Cleveland Clinic used intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) for brain connectivity (which means communication between different areas of the brain). They could successfully identify epilepsy with 87% accuracy. There were 23 patients examined in total by Galán and Arun Antony, MD, a senior clinical fellow in the Epilepsy Center at Cleveland Clinic and an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh. “Our discovery is another step towards the use of measures of functional connectivity in making clinical decisions in the treatment of epilepsy”, said Antony.