Resumen de Inside the brain, searching for seizures
Ananthaswamy talks about finding the source of seizure inside the brain. He's in the operating room at University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland with neurologist Thomas Grunwald, who has diagnosed 22-year-old Jeremy Kunzler with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy. His symptoms during fits suggest that the seizures begin in the left temporal lobe. Often, this condition can only be treated by surgically removing the errant brain tissue. Unfortunately, brain scans have revealed nothing that would point to the source of Kunzler's seizures--no obvious tumor, scar or lesion. In ordinary circumstances, Kunzler would have to undergo exploratory brain surgery. But instead of this drastic operation, Grunwald is pioneering a technique to pinpoint the problem area. He has asked neurosurgeon Niklaus Krayenbuhl to implant electrodes inside Kunzler's skull: a grid electrode over his left temporal lobe, and two strip electrodes beneath the left and right lobes, used to monitor activity bilaterally in the hippocampi and amygdalae. Once they are in place, Grunwald will record brain signals in real time during seizures and use the information to try to identify the epileptogenic tissue.
