This article was written by Professor David Henshall, Director of the FutureNeuro SFI Research Centre at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Genes and epilepsy A number of epilepsies are caused by mutations in genes. Errors in our DNA…
The unsung stars of the brain
This post was written by Janosch Heller, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Research Fellow from the SFI FutureNeuro Research Centre. The stars of the brain When you are asked to think about the brain, you probably imagine specialised nerve cells called…
Do all Dravet syndrome symptoms result from seizures?
Brain activity and ion channels In general, brain cells send signals by allowing electrically charged particles called ions to flow in and out of them. The body has many methods of controlling this signalling, but one of the main ways…
The curious multiple lives of ATP in epilepsy
The many lives of ATP Our keenest readers will remember a post from around this time last year about mitochondrial epilepsy. There, we learnt that the cells in our body, including brain cells, rely on a small molecule called ATP…
Targeting new brain structures to treat temporal lobe epilepsy
It is estimated that in the US alone, almost 200,000 people suffer from drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy. This is a specific sub-set of temporal lobe epilepsy where seizures can’t be adequately controlled by the medications which are currently available. About…
Predicting seizures with tRNA fragments
Predicting when seizures are going to happen is a big challenge for people with epilepsy, clinicians and researchers alike. As it stands, there are no reliable ways for someone to know in advance when they might have a seizure. For…
New directions in epilepsy research: treatments of the future?
We at Epilepsy in English were lucky enough to attend the British Neuroscience Association’s ‘Festival of Neuroscience’ in Dublin. It was a great opportunity to learn what is happening in the neuroscience field in the UK and Ireland. Amongst other…
New disease model sheds light on mitochondrial epilepsy
Our brains are hungry beasts There are around 86 billion (yes, billion) electrically active cells in the average human brain. Each one of these cells can connect to multiple others, adding up to something like 10 trillion (yes, trillion) intricate…
Roundworm protein is promising new epilepsy treatment
Surely, at some point in our lives, we have all asked ourselves the question: ‘just how can worms help us to cure epilepsy?’ No? Well actually me neither. But a curious quirk of worm neurobiology sparked a recent study by Dimitri…