The future of surgical treatments for epilepsy: identifying connectivity patterns

Did you know that INESC TEC is developing a clinical decision-support tool designed to help doctors analyse brain signals and even plan surgeries for patients with epilepsy?

Researcher José Almeida presented the preliminary results of his work at the 36^th International Epilepsy Congress, one of the world’s leading events in the field. By studying intracranial signals from epilepsy patients, the team explores how variations in the brain’s connectivity patterns relate to the onset of seizures.

“We demonstrated that the areas involved in the epileptogenic focus show distinctive connectivity behaviour, which allows us to differentiate them from other regions. This type of analysis adds quantitative and objective information to the clinical process, opposing the traditional approach based solely on visual interpretation,” explained José Almeida.

Epilepsy remains a condition surrounded by many uncertainties, and analysing intracranial signals through connectivity methods offers new insight into the neural mechanisms underlying the disease.

But the INESC TEC researcher aims to go even further: he is currently developing an innovative protocol to support thermocoagulation – a surgical procedure that uses intracranial EEG electrodes to emit radiofrequency impulses and destroy small areas of brain tissue responsible for seizures.

“We want to optimise the analysis of these elements and use them to develop AI models for selecting brain target-areas during the planning of therapies for drug-resistant epilepsy,” added José Almeida.

This research, conducted in close collaboration with the Epilepsy Team of the Neurology Service at Hospital de São João, reinforces INESC TEC’s role as a bridge between science and clinical practice.

“This partnership is essential to bring the knowledge generated in research environments into hospital settings and ensure real-world applicability,” concluded the researcher.

The researcher mentioned in this news piece is associated with INESC TEC.