For patients whose epilepsy is not controlled by medication, surgical intervention may offer the possibility of achieving seizure freedom— but after epileptic tissue is removed, how does the brain respond?
This is the question Ph.D. student Campbell Arnold has been researching at the CNT. At the ICTALS 2019 meeting, he presented his work on developing methods for assessing cortical thickness in patients after epilepsy surgery.
Cortical thickness is a known biomarker for epilepsy progression and is related to connectivity between brain regions. Arnold’s study found that the invasiveness of a patient’s surgical procedure was related to the scope of postoperative cortical thinning.
As new surgical techniques, such as laser ablation, offer minimally invasive surgical options to patients, Campbell plans to further develop and test his methods of assessing the brain’s postoperative development.