Epilepsy Clinical Trials

This is a two-arm randomized controlled trial to compare telephone-based depression self-management (UPLIFT) to telephone-based support groups (BOOST). A sample of 120 English- and Spanish-speaking people with epilepsy (PWE) with elevated depressive symptoms will be enrolled. Both interventions are 8-week programs delivered in one-hour weekly sessions to groups of about 6 participants. Changes in depressive symptoms, quality of life and seizures will be assessed over 12 months. The trial will also examine mediators and moderators of treatment effects. Read Less

Overall, this study will investigate the functional utility of stereotyped HFOs by capturing them with a new implantable system (Brain Interchange - BIC of CorTec), which can sample neural data at higher rates \>=1kHz and deliver targeted electrical stimulation to achieve seizure control. In contrast to current closed-loop systems (RNS), which wait for the seizure to start before delivering stimulation, the BIC system will monitor the spatial topography and rate of stereotyped HFOs and deliver targeted stimulation to these HFO generating areas to prevent seizures from occurring. If the outcomes of our research in an acute setting become successful, the investigators will execute a clinical trial and run the developed methods with the implantable BIC system in a chronic ambulatory setting. Read Less

The purpose of this research is to better understand how emotion processing unfolds in the brain using stereoelectroencephalography (sEEG) and direct brain stimulation. This study will use standard behavioral emotion processing tasks combined with neural recording and direct brain stimulation to assess different aspects of emotion processing. Stimulation pulses during pre and post-test periods will assess the effects of stimulation before and after conditioning, the results of which will be combined with results from the activity of each electrode during the emotion tasks to inform us of the nature of emotion processing in the brain and allow us to devise brain modulation protocols in the future. Read Less

The purpose of this post-approval study is to further evaluate the long-term safety and effectiveness of Medtronic DBS therapy for epilepsy on seizure reduction in newly implanted participants through 3 years of follow-up. Read Less

The goal of this observational study is to develop novel methods for integrating multimodal data streams with invasive neural recordings to study autobiographical memory (AM) formation in individuals with implanted neurostimulation devices (e.g., NeuroPace RNS) for epilepsy treatment. The main questions it aims to answer are: How does the brain encode and retrieve real-world autobiographical memories? Can multimodal data integration enhance our understanding of memory-related cognitive and neural mechanisms? Participants will: * Use a smartphone-based recording application (CAPTURE app) to collect real-world data. * Have their wearable sensor data (e.g., audio-visual, accelerometry, GPS, autonomic physiology, eye tracking) synchronized with invasive neural recordings. Researchers will analyze these multimodal data streams to develop new analytic approaches for studying memory formation in naturalistic settings, with the long-term goal of informing neuromodulation-based memory enhancement treatments for individuals with memory disorders. Read Less

The purpose of this research study is to better understand what causes Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). This study will enroll subjects from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC) Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU) and Epilepsy Clinics. The investigators will analyze the effects of seizures on breathing, on the cardiovascular system, and on arousal. The investigators are studying these effects because some cases of SUDEP might be due, in part, to an inability to wake up or sense elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels when breathing is impaired. Subjects will be followed for ten years after enrollment to monitor their health. Read Less

This research is being done to determine if Mozart music and/or age-appropriate music can reduce the frequency of seizures and epileptiform discharges. Read Less

We aim to determine the clinical utility of 'dynamic tractography': a novel method for visualizing electrical neural transfers that incorporates the underlying white matter tracts and supporting linguistic processing. We will also determine how well objective electrophysiology biomarkers will improve the prediction of language outcomes following epilepsy surgery. This project will ultimately optimize understanding of how the human brain develops its language network dynamics. Read Less

Depression is one of the most common disorders of mental health, affecting 7-8% of the population and causing tremendous disability to afflicted individuals and economic burden to society. In order to optimize existing treatments and develop improved ones, the investigators need a deeper understanding of the mechanistic basis of this complex disorder. Previous work in this area has made important progress but has two main limitations. (1) Most studies have used non-invasive and therefore imprecise measures of brain activity. (2) Black box modeling used to link neural activity to behavior remain difficult to interpret, and although sometimes successful in describing activity within certain contexts, may not generalize to new situations, provide mechanistic insight, or efficiently guide therapeutic interventions. To overcome these challenges, the investigators combine precise intracranial neural recordings in humans with a suite of new eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) approaches. The investigators have assembled a team of experimentalists and computational experts with combined experience sufficient for this task. Our unique dataset comprises two groups of subjects: the Epilepsy Cohort consists of patients with refractory epilepsy undergoing intracranial seizure monitoring, and the Depression Cohort consists of subjects in an NIH/BRAIN-funded research trial of deep brain stimulation for treatment-resistant depression (TRD). As a whole, this dataset provides precise, spatiotemporally resolved human intracranial recording and stimulation data across a wide dynamic range of depression severity. Our Aims apply a progressive approach to modeling and manipulating brain-behavior relationships. Aim 1 seeks to identify features of neural activity associated with mood states. Beginning with current state-of-the-art AI models and then uses a "ladder" approach to bridge to models of increasing expressiveness while imposing mechanistically explainable structure. Whereas Aim 1 focuses on self-reported mood level as the behavioral index of interest, Aim 2 uses an alternative approach of focusing on measurable neurobiological features inspired by the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). These features, such as reward sensitivity, loss aversion, executive attention, etc. are extracted from behavioral task performance using a novel "inverse rational control" XAI approach. Relating these measures to neural activity patterns provides additional mechanistic and normative understanding of the neurobiology of depression. Aim 3 uses recurrent neural networks to model the consequences of richly varied patterns of multi-site intracranial stimulation on neural activity. Then employing an innovative "inception loop" XAI approach to derive stimulation strategies for open- and closed-loop control that can drive the neural system towards a desired, healthier state. If successful, this project would enhance our understanding of the pathophysiology of depression and improve neuromodulatory treatment strategies. This can also be applied to a host of other neurological and psychiatric disorders, taking an important step towards XAI-guided precision neuroscience. Read Less

The goal of this clinical trial is to assess whether Lemborexant can improve sleep in patients with epilepsy. Read Less

Upon successful completion of this study, the investigators expect the study's contribution to be the development of noninvasive imaging biomarkers to predict IEEG functional dynamics and epilepsy surgical outcomes. Findings from the present study may inform current and new therapies to map and alter seizure spread, and pave the way for less invasive, better- targeted, patient-specific interventions with improved surgical outcomes. This research is relevant to public health because over 20 million people worldwide suffer from focal drug-resistant epilepsy and are potential candidates for cure with epilepsy surgical interventions. Read Less

This trial is a Phase II randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled multi-site study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of early sirolimus to prevent or delay seizure onset in TSC infants. This study is supported by research funding from the Office of Orphan Products Division (OOPD) of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Read Less