UH Engineer Receives $3.7M to Stop Epileptic Seizures Before They Begin
Nuri Firat Ince, associate professor of biomedical engineering, has received a $3.7 million BRAIN Initiative grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to translate his work into creating a next-generation device that can stop epileptic seizures before they begin.
University of Houston associate professor of biomedical engineering Nuri Firat Ince, who pioneered a dramatic decrease in the time it takes to detect the seizure onset zone (SOZ) in the brain, has received a $3.7 million BRAIN Initiative grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to translate his work into creating a next-generation device that can stop epileptic seizures before they begin.
Ince reduced the time – by weeks – of locating the SOZ, the actual part of the brain that causes seizures in patients with epilepsy, by detecting high frequency oscillations (HFO) which form repetitive waveform patterns that identify their location in the SOZ. Now he plans to use those HFOs to close the loop, translating them into seizure control applications, a method never before explored.
But first, he must figure out whether the HFOs generated by the seizure onset zone can be detected with an implantable system.
