Jul
Video Games: Key to Epilepsy Treatment
Teenagers playing with video games may help unlock the secrets of how memory works and help scientists to see what causes epilepsy in teenagers.
Experts consider that epileptic fits may instigate in the temporal lobe, which is linked to memory.
They say studying the brainwaves of severely epileptic teenagers as they play with video games may help identify which parts of the brain are most associated with memory and could eventually provide a key to treatment. The way scientists or researchers examine the teenagers’ brain waves are by putting wires on the surface of the brain as the teenagers are placed in virtual environments.
Epilepsy, which affects around 400,000 people in the UK, results in recurrent fits or seizures which can lead to loss of consciousness and death.
It is thought to be characterized by sudden out of control brainwave patterns.
Virtual Environments
Writing in Nature magazine, US neuroscientists at Brandeis University and Children’s Hospital in Boston describe how they utilized a video game which had been purposely designed by a 15 year old for the research.
It leads players through a series of virtual mazes and leaves them to find their own way out. They have to remember how they got there and where they have been.
They therefore have to rely on their memory of how they got there.
The scientists attached wires to various parts of the teenagers’ brains to monitor their electrical activity.
As the teenagers are busy playing the video games, the scientists look at theta oscillations, slow, rhythmic waves of electrical activity. They found that different parts of the brain reacted to different parts of the video games.
Certain slower types of electrical activity were associated with spatial learning and were particularly marked when the teenagers were trying to find their way out of the mazes.
Dr Michael Kahana, one of the researchers, said: “Hundreds of papers have linked theta oscillations to spatial learning in rats and other animals; our study is the first to seal the link between theta and spatial learning in humans.”
People with placid epilepsy can be treated with medicine, but, in those with a stern form of the condition, doctors try to situate and remove the part of the brain which is thought to be the cause of the problem.
Professor of Psychology at Brandeis says, “By playing video games today, these heroic teenagers are helping the kids of the future have happier, healthier, seizure free lives. With more work, we may be able to understand why the brain’s rhythmic activity sometimes spins out of control. The long-range goal is developing a cure for epilepsy.”
