New System Enables Mapping of Brain Activity Without Patient Cooperation

Surgical options such as resection or ablation offers the best way to treat drug-resistant epilepsy. During this procedure, surgeons need to spend a lot of time to electrically stimulate the brain while the patient reports sensations. The patient also needs to move muscles and the doctor uses electrodes to detect signals on the brain’s surface.

During this time the brain is exposed and the patient needs to have attention span and tolerance to undergo this procedure. This will prove very difficult for small children and those with mental problems.

Researchers at University of Freiburg, Germany have developed a new system which needs relatively less cooperation from the patient to map brain surface activity.

Video was taken of patients with implanted electrodes on the brain while they talked and performed everyday movements. Their brain activity was recorded and synchronized with the video. The video was analyzed by the team and the brain activity was reviewed. The results showed that this approach is quite effective.



Source-Medindia