What happens in the brain just before a seizure starts?
Grant round winners 2007 24 April 2007 John Jefferys, Premysl Jiruska and John Fox, at the Division of Neuroscience, University of Birmingham, are investigating a characteristic pattern of electrical a [...]
A new type of epilepsy syndrome starting in infancy
Grant round winners 2007 13 July 2007 In 2004, a group of researchers at St George's Hospital Medical School in London identified a gene mutation that causes a rare type of severe epilepsy starting in [...]
How is it that seizures damage the brain?
Grant round winners 2007 24 April 2007 It's known that seizures damage the brain, especially if prolonged. That's why status epilepticus (a seizure that doesn't self-terminate, lasting at least 10 cont [...]
Seizures that damage memory: transient epileptic amnesia
Grant round winners 2007 24 April 2007 Many people with epilepsy complain of having problems with their memory. Seizures themselves, anti-epileptic medicines, mood changes and any underlying brain cond [...]
What is the link between febrile seizures in childhood and epilepsy later in life?
About 5% of all children under the age of five years will experience at some point a seizure caused by a fever. These are called febrile seizures. These seizures are not normally serious, and go away w [...]
Refractory convulsive status epilepticus
£6,657 over 3 months (project grant) Dr Richard Appleton, Roald Dahl EEG Unit, Department of Neurology, Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital (Alder Hey); Dr Timothy Martland, Department of Neurology, Ro [...]
Memory decline in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy – could it be stopped?
Despite years of research into the causes of epilepsy and the treatment of seizures, little attention has been paid to the causes of memory loss and depression in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy ( [...]
The effect of being diagnosed with epilepsy on quality of life
Seizures and epilepsy can have a profound impact on a person's quality of life. Up till now, most research on quality of life in epilepsy has been concerned with the quality of life of people with alre [...]
How do women with epilepsy take decisions about pregnancy?
About a third of the 456,000 people with epilepsy in the UK are women of childbearing age (16 to 45 years). Many of these women may become pregnant whilst taking anti-epileptic drugs. We know a great d [...]
Looking for genes associated with idiopathic generalised epilepsy
Dr Andrew Makoff and his team at the Institute of Psychiatry in London will carry out a study on 469 DNA samples from patients with idiopathic generalised epilepsy (IGE) and their parents and some cont [...]
Storage capacity for an Epilepsy DNA Biobank
£9,600 (equipment grant) Professor Mark Rees, School of Medicine, University of Wales Swansea [...]
Excessive neurotransmitter release during seizures – how and why?
Dr Michael Cousin of the University of Edinburgh will be looking at neurotransmitters, this time at the cellular processes that govern their release. Neurotransmitters are essential to normal brain act [...]