Move will help up to 150 patients a year whose condition has not responded positively to anti-seizure drugs
Up to 150 people a year with epilepsy will have a potentially life-changing new form of surgery on the part of their brain that is causing their seizures, in an NHS initiative.
NHS England is making available a “world-leading” fibre-optic laser beam surgery that would let epilepsy sufferers avoid having to undergo neurosurgery, which is much more invasive.
Continue reading...Exclusive: mother of Emily Whelan hopes tests that helped prove Stewart was murdered may shed light on daughter’s death
The mother of a woman with epilepsy who died in 2016 hopes the high-profile murder of Diane Stewart could hold the key to establishing her daughter’s cause of death.
Emily Whelan, 25, was found unresponsive in her bedroom in Leeds on 7 November 2016 and pronounced dead the next day at Leeds general infirmary.
Continue reading...Tech companies are seeking to analyse data on the way we tap, scroll, text and call to monitor our mental health – with potential consequences for privacy and healthcare
We all fear our smartphones spy on us, and I’m subject to a new type of surveillance. An app called TapCounter records each time I touch my phone’s screen. My swipes and jabs are averaging about 1,000 a day, though I notice that’s falling as I steer shy of social media to meet my deadline. The European company behind it, QuantActions, promises that through capturing and analysing the data it will be able to “detect important indicators related to mental/neurological health”.
Arko Ghosh is the company’s cofounder and a neuroscientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “Tappigraphy patterns” – the time series of my touches – can, he says, confidently be used not only to infer slumber habits (tapping in the wee hours means you are not sleeping) but also mental performance level (the small intervals in a series of key-presses represent a proxy for reaction time), and he has published work to support it.
Continue reading...Scent linked to epileptic seizures could mean dogs can be trained to warn owners
Dogs can detect a telltale scent linked to epileptic seizures, scientists have discovered, raising the possibility that they could be trained to reliably warn owners when a seizure is imminent.
The findings may also help explain anecdotal reports that dogs are able to sense when their owner is about to have a seizure. Knowing when a seizure is going to occur could allow people with epilepsy to have greater control and independence, meaning they could take measures to avoid injury, seek help or take medication.
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