Epilepsy comprises a group of disorders of the brain characterized by the periodic and unpredictable occurrence of seizures. Reliable means of detecting changes which occur during the pre-seizure state could serve as a method of seizure prediction, a benchmark in epilepsy research. A fast optical signal that coincides with the actual onset of neural activity has been observed both in vitro and in vivo. Pre-seizure fast optical signal, characterized by a reduction in near-infrared (NIR) optical scattering, occurs seconds to minutes prior to detection of seizure by electroencephalography (EEG). The long-term goal of this collaborative project involving our lab and Drs. Devin Binder’s and Hyle Park’s laboratories (UC Riverside) is to develop novel optical methods to detect these pre-seizure changes in a clinically-relevant time window. This project is awarded by grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
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