Links for Keyword: Epilepsy

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By Gina Kolata A new drug, created to treat just one patient, has pushed the bounds of personalized medicine and has raised unexplored regulatory and ethical questions, scientists reported on Wednesday. The drug, described in the New England Journal of Medicine, is believed to be the first “custom” treatment for a genetic disease. It is called milasen, named after the only patient who will ever take it: Mila (mee-lah) Makovec, who lives with her mother, Julia Vitarello, in Longmont, Colo. Mila, 8, has a rapidly progressing neurological disorder that is fatal. Her symptoms started at age 3. Within a few years, she had gone from an agile, talkative child to one who was blind and unable to stand or hold up her head. She needed a feeding tube and experienced up to 30 seizures a day, each lasting one or two minutes. Ms. Vitarello learned in December 2016 that Mila had Batten’s disease. But the girl’s case was puzzling, doctors said. Batten’s disease is recessive — a patient must inherit two mutated versions of a gene, MFSD8, to develop the disease. Mila had one just mutated gene, and the other copy seemed normal. That should have been sufficient to prevent the disease. In March 2017, Dr. Timothy Yu and his colleagues at Boston Children’s Hospital discovered that the problem with the intact gene lay in an extraneous bit of DNA that had scrambled the manufacturing of an important protein. That gave Dr. Yu an idea: Why not make a custom piece of RNA to block the effects of the extraneous DNA? Developing such a drug would be expensive, but there were no other options. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 26688 - Posted: 10.10.2019

By Denise Grady The actor Cameron Boyce, 20, who died on Saturday, had epilepsy, and his death was caused by a seizure that occurred during his sleep, his family said in a statement. Mr. Boyce starred in shows on the Disney Channel, including “Descendants” and “Jessie,” and appeared in a number of movies. “Cameron’s tragic passing was due to a seizure as a result of an ongoing medical condition, and that condition was epilepsy,” a Boyce family spokesperson told ABC News in a statement on Tuesday night. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office conducted an autopsy, but said it was awaiting the results of additional tests before determining an official cause of death. The most likely cause of his death was Sudep, or sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, said Dr. Orrin Devinsky, director of NYU Langone’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center in Manhattan. He was not involved in Mr. Boyce’s care. Each year, about one in 1,000 people with epilepsy die from this disorder. In the United States, there are about 2,600 such deaths a year, though neurologists suspect that figure is an undercount. “It can happen to anyone with epilepsy,” Dr. Devinsky said. “Even the first seizure could be the last one. The more uncontrolled the seizures, the more severe, and the more they occur in sleep, the higher the risk.” About 70 percent of cases occur during sleep, and the people are often found facedown in bed. Usually, they have been sleeping alone. The probable cause of death is that the person stops breathing. A severe seizure can temporarily shut down the brain, including the centers that control respiration, Dr. Devinsky said. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 26408 - Posted: 07.11.2019

Strobe lighting at music festivals can increase the risk of epileptic seizures, researchers have warned. The Dutch team said even people who have not been diagnosed with epilepsy might be affected. Their study was prompted by the case of a 20-year-old, with no history of epilepsy, who suddenly collapsed and had a fit at a festival. The Epilepsy Society said festivals should limit lighting to the recommended levels. Epilepsy is a condition that affects the brain. There are many types, and it can start at any age. Around 3% of people with epilepsy are photosensitive, which means their seizures are triggered by flashing or flickering lights, or patterns. The Health and Safety Executive recommends strobe lighting should be kept to a maximum of four hertz (four flashes per second) in clubs and at public events. 'Life-affirming' The researchers studied electronic dance music festivals because they often use strobe lighting. They looked at data on people who needed medical care among the 400,000 visitors to 28 day and night-time dance music festivals across the Netherlands in 2015. The figures included 241,000 people who were exposed to strobe lights at night-time festivals. Thirty people at night-time events with strobe lighting had a seizure, compared with nine attending daytime events. The team, led by Newel Salet of the VU Medical Centre in Amsterdam, writing in BMJ Open, said other factors could increase the risk of seizures. But they added: "Regardless of whether stroboscopic lights are solely responsible or whether sleep deprivation and/or substance abuse also play a role, the appropriate interpretation is that large [electronic dance music] festivals, especially during the night-time, probably cause at least a number of people per event to suffer epileptic seizures." They advise anyone with photosensitive epilepsy to either avoid such events or to take precautionary measures, such as getting enough sleep and not taking drugs, not standing close to the stage, and leaving quickly if they experience any "aura" effects. © 2019 BBC

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 10: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 7: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Link ID: 26323 - Posted: 06.12.2019

Hadley Freeman Like everyone else at this point, I have many questions about Brexit, starting with “why” and going from there. For example: are concerns about how Britain is going to cope merely “project fear”, as some Brexity folk still have it? Is it going to be like the blitz, as other Brexity people have promised enthusiastically? Such people include someone called Ant Middleton from Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, who said last year in a tweet (since deleted): “A ‘no deal’ for our country would actually be a blessing in disguise. It would force us into hardship and suffering which would unite & bring us together, bringing back British values of loyalty and a sense of community!” Truly, there are few things as touching as a grown man playing soldiers by waxing nostalgic for a time he didn’t live through. And by “touching” I mean “nauseating”. I try to avoid writing about Brexit for the same reason I avoid eating my hair: you just end up choking on the pointlessness of it all. But one question has become too pressing to ignore: just how self-centred do you have to be to think the risk of making it harder for people to get necessary medications is an irrelevant niggle while you achieve your masturbatory fantasy of “sovereignty”? Sure, talk of insulin supplies, say, is a bummer when you are entertaining dreams of sailing victoriously back from Brussels beneath a St George’s flag, like George Washington crossing the Delaware in Emanuel Leutze’s painting, only less American (although, given that our supermarkets may soon be stuffed with chlorinated chicken from the US, maybe not). But for those who have long been dependent on certain drugs, these niggly questions make a no-deal Brexit less of a blessing in disguise. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 26020 - Posted: 03.09.2019

By Kara Manke A new neurostimulator developed by engineers at UC Berkeley can listen to and stimulate electric current in the brain at the same time, potentially delivering fine-tuned treatments to patients with diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson’s. The device, named the WAND, works like a “pacemaker for the brain,” monitoring the brain’s electrical activity and delivering electrical stimulation if it detects something amiss. These devices can be extremely effective at preventing debilitating tremors or seizures in patients with a variety of neurological conditions. But the electrical signatures that precede a seizure or tremor can be extremely subtle, and the frequency and strength of electrical stimulation required to prevent them is equally touchy. It can take years of small adjustments by doctors before the devices provide optimal treatment. WAND, which stands for wireless artifact-free neuromodulation device, is both wireless and autonomous, meaning that once it learns to recognize the signs of tremor or seizure, it can adjust the stimulation parameters on its own to prevent the unwanted movements. And because it is closed-loop — meaning it can stimulate and record simultaneously — it can adjust these parameters in real-time. © 2019 UC Regents;

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 25830 - Posted: 01.01.2019

It started when Andi Dreher was only three years old. Her head slumped over, her face went blank. It was the first of many epileptic seizures that the Ontario child would endure. At the beginning, Andi would have a couple of seizures a year, but the condition slowly progressed. By the time she turned seven, she was having up to 150 seizures a day. Her family has come to call them "glitches." "The other day at school, she had 27 glitches in less than an hour," said her mom, Lori Dreher. The seizures make it difficult for Andi to do even the simplest tasks, such as walking, talking and eating. "She knows she used to play soccer and she used to do cheerleading — that she used to do these things and now she can't. That's hard." her mom said. 'We're guinea pigs': Canada's oversight process for implanted medical devices stuns suffering patients Among serious neurological conditions in children, epilepsy is the most common. For most, the condition can be controlled by medications. "But about one-third of children who have epilepsy don't respond to medication. A subset of them can potentially be helped by a variety of surgical treatment," said Dr. George Ibrahim, the pediatric neurosurgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children who operated on Andi. Dr. George Ibrahim, pediatric neurosurgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children, examines an image of Andi's brain. (Kelda Yuen/ CBC) When Andi and her family came from Kitchener to meet him last year, Ibrahim said he was struck by the severity of her case. "Her brain is developed in a very unique way," he said. ©2018 CBC/Radio-Canada

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 25784 - Posted: 12.13.2018

By Daphne Merkin A trauma is a trauma is a trauma. Or is it? Over the past decade, the words “trauma” and “traumatic” have been used so profligately and have entered our cultural discourse to such an extent that they have almost lost their depth-charge, the reactive implosion of psychic damage to which they were originally meant to refer. Everyone in this era is traumatized by everything, from inappropriate sexual come-ons to the use of language in novels by such literary greats as Joseph Conrad and Mark Twain now considered inflammatory in its assumptions about class, race or privilege. (Hence: trigger warnings, safe spaces and microaggressions.) The late novelist and critic V. S. Naipaul saw himself in an epochal battle against the cloudy and clichéd thinking to which this kind of easy resort to the dichotomy of the abused versus the abusers is conducive, replete with right-thinking but ultimately wishful ideas about the ways in which power and human nature interact. And then along comes a book, like Kurt Eichenwald’s “A Mind Unraveled,” that makes you rethink not only the concept of trauma but its potential impact — the ways in which trauma can work not only to weaken but to strengthen the character of the person who has experienced it. His remarkable memoir reads, unaccountably, like the most hair-raising of psychological thrillers, despite the fact that the saga of Eichenwald’s life as an epileptic from his late teens up until the present, when he has become a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, would not seem to contain the potential for so much suspense. He grasps the gritty issues surrounding his own very real trauma and often horrific experiences — from enduring frequent convulsions and losses of consciousness to the threat of being thrown out of college to losing jobs — with so little self-pity and so much regard for the compensations the world has to offer even to those afflicted as he is. It’s a quality that sets this book vividly apart from other memoirs that deal with suffering. For anyone who wants to understand the complex dynamic between environmental battering and the sort of inner strength that often goes by the name of resilience, this is the book to turn to. “I have lived most of my life,” Eichenwald writes, “knowing I could be seconds away from falling to the ground, seizing, burning, freezing or worse. Am I too near that window? Am I too high up? Is the oven open? I ask these questions every day.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 25578 - Posted: 10.16.2018

Mandy McKnight's son Liam has Dravet syndrome, a form of epilepsy that causes him to have up to 70 seizures a day. McKnight began giving the 10-year-old cannabis products about five years ago. "He'll always have Dravet syndrome, but it has definitely provided him with a quality of life that other medication failed to do," said McKnight, who is originally from Torbay but lives in Ottawa. Since that time, Liam's seizures have nearly stopped — his mother estimates they've been reduced by 90 per cent. Doctors have said they're hearing from more and more parents who have purchased cannabinoid products online and believe they are helping their children, but still have questions about appropriate dosage and formulas, said Lauren Kelly, a clinical researcher with a PhD in pharmacology working at the University of Manitoba. Parents are self-prescribing for a variety of conditions in children including epilepsy, migraines, autism and brain cancer, said Kelly, who co-authored a commentary for the Canadian Medical Association Journal titled "Clinical trials needed to study cannabinoid use in Canadian children." There are different types of cannabinoids, she said, and they have different effects. But because many of the products are unregulated, it's often not known exactly what dosage a child might be getting. ©2018 CBC/Radio-Canada

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25428 - Posted: 09.10.2018

Lesley Mcclurg The first prescription medication extracted from the marijuana plant is poised to land on pharmacists' shelves this fall. Epidiolex, made from purified cannabidiol, or CBD, a compound found in the cannabis plant, is approved for two rare types of epilepsy. Its journey to market was driven forward by one family's quest to find a treatment for their son's epilepsy. Scientific and public interest in CBD had been percolating for several years before the Food and Drug Administration finally approved Epidiolex in June. But CBD — which doesn't cause the mind-altering high that comes from THC, the primary psychoactive component of marijuana — was hard to study, because of tight restrictions on using cannabis in research. Sam Vogelstein's family and his doctors found ways to work around those restrictions in their fight to control his seizures. Sam's seizures started in 2005 when he was four years old. It's a moment his mother, Evelyn Nussenbaum, will never forget. The family was saying goodbye to a dinner guest when Sam's face suddenly slackened and he fell forward at the waist. Article continues after sponsorship "He did something that looked like a judo bow after a match," says Nussenbaum. Two months passed before Sam had another seizure, but then he started having them every week. Eventually he was suffering through 100 seizures a day. © 2018 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 25296 - Posted: 08.06.2018

Jessica Wright When Abigail was 19 months old, she took a ferry with her mother Gillian across the English Channel during a move from Germany to England. On board, she played with a Belgian toddler whose mother, a doctor, took notice of Abigail’s tight muscles and lack of language. (Gillian asked that we omit their last names to protect their privacy.) “What syndrome does she have?” the doctor asked Gillian. Gillian didn’t know. In the coming years, Abigail would receive diagnoses of autism and intellectual disability; she also has recurrent seizures. But it took 20 years to get an answer to the Belgian doctor’s question. In 2013, Abigail’s doctor, Meena Balasubramanian, enrolled Abigail in Deciphering Developmental Disorders (DDD), a study in which researchers sequence an individual’s genes to find the cause of undiagnosed genetic conditions. In Abigail, they found a de novo, or spontaneous, mutation in a known epilepsy gene called HNRNPU. Gillian learned of the result just last year. Over the past year, this gene has emerged as a new autism candidate associated with a neurodevelopmental syndrome. Finding the genetic cause for Abigail’s condition sparked Balasubramanian’s interest in the gene. She has since collected clinical information from six other people with these mutations, five of whom were identified through DDD. These participants share Abigail’s learning difficulties and seizures. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25250 - Posted: 07.26.2018

Shawna Williams The US Food and Drug Administration today (June 25) approved for the first time a marijuana-derived drug, Epidiolex, for the treatment of two rare forms of epilepsy. The drug contains cannabidiol, or CBD, and does not make users high while reducing the rate of seizures in patients with Dravet or Lennox-Gastaut syndromes, clinical trials show. “In my practice, I often see patients with these highly treatment-resistant epilepsies who have tried and failed existing therapies and are asking about CBD,” says Orrin Devinsky of NYU Langone Health, a lead investigator in the trials, in a statement released by the company that makes Epidiolex. “I am delighted that my physician colleagues and I will now have the option of a prescription cannabidiol that has undergone the rigor of controlled trials and been approved by the FDA to treat both children and adults.” Both Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut are relatively severe forms of epilepsy that can be fatal, STAT News notes. While there are other drugs approved to treat Lennox-Gastaut, there had previously been none for Dravet. Some parents have used unapproved CBD oils to treat their children. In a statement released today, FDA notes that it “has taken recent actions against companies distributing unapproved CBD products. . . . We’ll continue to take action when we see the illegal marketing of CBD-containing products with unproven medical claims.” © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist Magazine®

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 25148 - Posted: 06.27.2018

By Amanda Svachula Marcos Gardiana, a self-proclaimed Disney fanatic with five tattoos of Disney characters on his body to prove it, was excited to see the company’s latest blockbuster, “Incredibles 2,” on Sunday, and took his girlfriend along with him. He never got to see the end of it. Mr. Gardiana, 27, who has epilepsy as a result of a brain injury from a 2011 car accident, said he started getting lightheaded and dizzy in the theater. He had a “small” seizure at first, he said, and then a “blackout seizure, a full-on shaking seizure.” His girlfriend, Courtney Anderson, 21, led him to a bench outside. “He sat down for a minute, pale as a ghost,” she said. “He had a second, full-on seizure, eyes rolled back. And he lost consciousness.” Mr. Gardiana had apparently suffered seizures triggered by flashing lights during the movie, an unusual but also a well-established peril for some people with epilepsy. It was unclear whether the Walt Disney Company, which did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, had warned theaters about the danger. But beginning on Friday, the first full day of showings for “Incredibles 2,” signs began appearing in movie houses warning that a “sequence of flashing lights” may affect people who are susceptible to “photosensitive epilepsy or other photosensitivities.” But it appears that some epileptic viewers did not get the memo. Mr. Gardiana said he saw no warning signs in the Las Vegas theater he went to. The manager of the theater said that a sign had been posted on Friday but that she could not comment further. In Times Square, where the movie was showing at the Regal Cinemas, a sign did not go up on Monday until this reporter asked where it was; that theater’s manager declined to comment. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 25103 - Posted: 06.19.2018

By SHEILA KAPLAN WASHINGTON — A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on Thursday unanimously recommended approval of an epilepsy medication made with an ingredient found in marijuana. If the agency follows the recommendation, as is expected, the drug would be the first cannabis-derived prescription medicine available in the United States. The drug, called Epidiolex, is made by GW Pharmaceuticals, a British company. Its active ingredient, cannabidiol, also called CBD, is one of the chemical compounds found in the cannabis plant, but it does not contain the properties that make people high. That makes it different from the “medical marijuana” allowed by a growing number of states. In those cases, certain patients are legally authorized to smoke or ingest marijuana to treat severe pain, nausea and other ailments. There are already several drugs on the market that are derived from synthetic versions of THC and other chemicals of the cannabis plant, generally used to ease nausea in cancer patients, and to help AIDS patients avoid weight loss. Advocates for development of marijuana-based treatments, and those pushing for better treatments of epilepsy, were pleased with the panel’s recommendation. “This is a very good development, and it basically underscores that there are medicinal properties to some of the cannabinoids,” said Dr. Igor Grant, director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California San Diego. “I think there could well be other cannabinoids that are of therapeutic use, but there is just not enough research on them to say.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 24889 - Posted: 04.21.2018

A small group of cells in the brain can have a big effect on seizures and memory in a mouse model of epilepsy. According to a new study in Science, loss of mossy cells may contribute to convulsive seizures in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) as well as memory problems often experienced by people with the disease. The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health. “The role of mossy cells in epilepsy has been debated for decades. This study reveals how critical these cells are in the disease, and the findings suggest that preventing loss of mossy cells or finding ways to activate them may be potential therapeutic targets,” said Vicky Whittemore, Ph.D., program director at NINDS. Mossy cells, named for the dense moss-like protrusions that cover their surface, are located in the hippocampus, a brain area that is known to play key roles in memory. Loss of mossy cells is associated with TLE, but it is unknown what role that plays in the disease. Using state-of-the-art tools, Ivan Soltesz, Ph.D., professor of neurosurgery and neurosciences at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, and his team were able to turn mossy cells on and off to track their effects in a mouse model of epilepsy. “This study would not have been possible without the rapid advancement of technology, thanks in part to the BRAIN Initiative, which has encouraged scientists to develop innovative instruments and new ways to look at the brain,” said Dr. Soltesz. “It’s remarkable that we can manipulate specific brain cells in the hippocampus of a mouse. Using 21st century tools brings us closer than ever to unlocking the mysteries behind this debilitating disease.”

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 24669 - Posted: 02.16.2018

Jon Hamilton When Sarah Jay had her first seizure, she was in her mid-20s and working a high-stress job at a call center in Springfield, Mo. "I was going to go on break," she says. "I was heading towards the bathroom and then I fell and passed out." An ambulance took Jay to the hospital but doctors there couldn't find anything wrong. Jay figured it was a one-time thing. Then a week later, she had another seizure. And that kept happening once or twice a week. "So I was put on short-term disability for my work to try to figure out what was going on," says Jay, who's now 29. The most likely cause for her seizures was abnormal electrical activity in her brain. In other words, epilepsy. But Jay's doctors wanted to be sure. In May 2013, they admitted her to a hospital epilepsy center, put electrodes on her scalp and began watching her brain activity. An epileptic seizure looks a bit like an electrical storm in the brain. Neurons begin to fire uncontrollably, which can cause patients to lose consciousness or have muscle spasms. But during Jay's seizures, her brain activity appeared completely normal. "It was kind of surreal," she says. "This woman, she sat me down and she was like, 'OK, you do not have epilepsy.' And I'm like, 'OK, so what's going on?' " The woman told Jay her seizures were the result of a psychological disorder called psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. PNES is a surprisingly common disorder, says John Stern, who directs the epilepsy clinical program at the University of California, Los Angeles. About 1 in 3 people who come to UCLA for uncontrolled seizures don't have epilepsy. Usually, they have PNES, he says. © 2018 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 24606 - Posted: 02.02.2018

by Ariana Eunjung Cha A new class of epilepsy medications based on an ingredient derived from marijuana could be available as soon as the second half of 2018 in the United States, pending Food and Drug Administration approval. Officials from GW Pharmaceuticals, the company that developed the drug, on Wednesday announced promising results from a study on 171 patients randomized into treatment and placebo groups. Members of the group, ages 2 to 55, have a condition called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and were suffering from seizures that were not being controlled by existing drugs. On average they had tried and discontinued six anti-seizure treatments and were experiencing 74 “drop” seizures per month. Drop seizures involve the entire body, trunk or head and often result in a fall or other type of injury. The results, published in the Lancet, show that over a 14-week treatment period, 44 percent of patients taking the drug, called Epidiolex, saw a significant reduction in seizures, compared with 22 percent of the placebo group. Moreover, more of the patients who got the drug experienced a 50 percent or greater reduction in drop seizures. Elizabeth Thiele, director of pediatric epilepsy at Massachusetts General Hospital and lead author of the study, said the results varied depending on the patient. “For some, it does not do a whole lot. But for the people it does work in, it is priceless,” she said. “One child who comes to mind had multiple seizures a day. She had been on every medication possible,” said Thiele, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. Then the patient tried the cannabis-based treatment and has been seizure-free for almost four years. “She is now talking about college options. She would have never had that conversation before. It has been life-changing.” © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 24573 - Posted: 01.26.2018

By Diana Kwon Centuries ago, humans believed that seizures were tied to the lunar cycle. Although scientific evidence for this association is scarce, physicians have long suspected that temporal patterns connected with epilepsy may exist. These days, the condition’s link to our sleep-wake cycles, or circadian rhythms, is well-documented, primarily through observations that seizures are more prevalent at night or tend to occur at specific times of day. Scientists now report the existence of seizure-associated brain rhythms with longer periods, most commonly within the 20- to 30-day range, in a study published today (January 8) in Nature Communications. “People have made these observations since antiquity and have wanted to speculate and explain these oscillations for a long time,” study coauthor Vikram Rao, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, tells The Scientist. “But only recently [have we gotten] the tools that might allow us to actually unravel this.” Rao and his colleagues analyzed data collected from one such tool—the NeuroPace device, an FDA-approved, implanted brain stimulator that continuously monitors neural activity and sends electrical pulses when a seizure is imminent. It acts, in some sense, like a “pacemaker for the brain,” Rao says. The device detects and records both seizures and interictal epileptiform discharges, pathological brain activity associated with these events, using electroencephalography (EEG). “In between seizures, we see electric discharges that signify irritability of the brain and a propensity to have seizures,” Rao explains. “It’s like seeing sparks from a match, where you say, wow, that looks like there’s potential for a fire but it’s not the fire itself.” © 1986-2018 The Scientist

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 14: Biological Rhythms, Sleep, and Dreaming
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 10: Biological Rhythms and Sleep
Link ID: 24513 - Posted: 01.10.2018

By Sara Van Note On a recent Saturday morning, two-year-old Ryleigh and five-year-old Colton Arnett play with brightly colored play dough in the family room of their Albuquerque home. Colton narrates his creations with a gap-toothed smile. “I’m going to use a mold. I’m going to make a boat.” Ryleigh echoes him enthusiastically, “Mold! Boat!” An estimated 30,000 New Mexicans carry the mutation, and the numbers are increasing. Their mother, Lori Dunworth, remarks that Colton and his sister don’t usually play so well together. “Usually she’s a bit of a bully when it comes to toys.” Both Ryleigh and Colton receive speech therapy because of something that happened to Colton several years ago, when Dunworth and her husband, Toby Arnett, first noticed that Colton, who was two at the time, was making repeating clicking sounds while his face twitched on one side. After one episode lasted over 20 minutes, they called their doctor, who told them to take him to the hospital immediately. Colton had suffered a seizure, and scans would later reveal masses in his brain — lesions, it turned out, caused by abnormal blood vessels. “The original impact was devastating,” Arnett says. Colton was ultimately diagnosed with Cerebral Cavernous Malformations (CCM), a rare disease that can cause seizure, stroke, and death. He also tested positive for a genetic mutation that causes the disease, known as the Common Hispanic Mutation. Colton’s sister and his mom also have the mutation. Dunworth had no idea she was the carrier. “I’ve never had any symptoms, no seizures, no paralysis, no nothing,” she says. Copyright 2017 Undark

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 24184 - Posted: 10.12.2017

A cannabis compound has been proven for the first time to reduce the frequency of seizures in people with a rare, severe form of epilepsy, according to the results of a randomized trial. For years, parents have pointed to anecdotal benefits of cannabidiol (CBD), a compound in the marijuana plant that does not produce a high, saying it reduces seizures in treatment-resistant epilepsy. Now doctors have performed a randomized trial to show cause and effect, with the findings published in Wednesday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. To conduct the study, the researchers focused on Dravet syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy that begins in infancy and is linked to a particular mutation that often resists combinations of up to 10 conventional seizure medications. They enrolled 120 patients who ranged in age from 2.5 to 18 years. Sixty-one patients were randomly assigned to cannabidiol, and the 59 others to placebo. Neither the researchers nor the families knew who received the medication to prevent bias. All continued to take their existing medications. "The message is that cannabidiol does work in reducing convulsing seizures in children with Dravet syndrome," said lead author Dr. Orrin Devinksy, who is director of NYU's Langone Comprehensive Epilepsy Center. For those in the cannabinoid group, the median number of convulsive seizures per month dropped from 12.4 per month before treatment, to 5.9 seizures, the researchers reported. The placebo group, in comparison, only saw their convulsive seizures fall from 14.9 per month, to 14.1. ©2017 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 23659 - Posted: 05.25.2017

By KAREN BARROW The World Health Organization estimates that more than 50 million people worldwide have some form of epilepsy, a neurological disorder that is characterized by recurring episodes of seizure. While seizures come in various forms, those with epilepsy cope with similar issues: social stigma, complex treatment options and a feeling of powerlessness. Here, eight men, women and children discuss what it’s like to live with epilepsy. Denise L. Pease, an assistant comptroller for New York City, began having complex partial seizures after a car accident in which she suffered a traumatic brain injury. But because Ms. Pease lives alone, it wasn’t until a relative saw her having a tonic-clonic seizure, what used to be known as a grand mal seizure, that she realized she had developed epilepsy. Tonic-clonic seizures typically involve the whole body and can be very dramatic. Ms. Pease began to notice that she would get a strange taste in her mouth before a seizure, so whenever that happened she made sure she was seated in a safe location and waited for the seizure to pass. This sensation of an oncoming seizure, called an aura, is common among people with epilepsy. After eight years of trying different medications to control her epilepsy, Ms. Pease is happy to be back at work and no longer lives in fear of an imminent seizure. Ms. Pease is hopeful that she will soon be able to drive, and she continues to plan for her future. “When you have epilepsy, you have to be your own advocate,” she said. Sallie Gallagher’s son, Michael, started having complex partial seizures at age 4. This type of seizure doesn’t cause the full-body twitching associated with tonic-clonic seizure, but it can cause a person to start to act strangely or be completely unaware of his surroundings. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 23544 - Posted: 04.27.2017