BRC researchers have used a combination of functional imaging and neuropsychological testing to identify the role of areas of the brain responsible for memory and the likely impact of their removal to treat focal epilepsy.
This study, published in Brain, uses the visual and verbal memory activation paradigms to find out if functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) could be used to predict what temporal lobe surgery would do to memory. fMRI is an imaging method that localises areas of the brain responsible for controlling neurological functions by identifying changes in blood oxygen levels in the brain when specific tasks are performed.
Epilepsy is one of the most common serious neurological disorders, affecting half a million people in the UK, and developing in 30,000 people every year. The most common site for neurosurgical treatment of epilepsy is the temporal lobe, its two main roles being memory and language.
About two thirds of those suffering with focal epilepsy do well with medication, but the remaining third, or 10,000 people a year, do not and they continue to have seizures. If the epileptic seizures arise in one part of the brain, one option can be to remove that part surgically and this can cure a person of epilepsy.
Professor Duncan said: “A balance has to be struck between taking out a small amount of the anterior temporal lobe, which is unlikely to give seizure control and will have little effect on memory, as opposed to making a large resection, where the chances of completely stopping seizures are higher, but the effect on memory will be more severe. Our aim is to use these methods to optimally design the surgical approach for individual patients.”
He went on: “As well as funding key staff the BRC also provided a vital capital award which funded part of the IT infrastructure required for data analysis, generated from an MRI scanner funded by the Epilepsy Society. The study represents the output of a unique partnership between the hospital trust, university and charitable sector.”
To read ‘A functional magnetic resonance imaging study mapping the episodic memory encoding network in temporal lobe epilepsy’ click here.
