Hungarian defibrillator can stop epileptic attacks

As szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu reports, researchers of University of Szeged (SZTE) have developed a defibrillator for patients suffering from epilepsy. The device uses just the right amount of electrical energy to stop epileptic attacks. It goes off only at the right time, and it adjusts to the dynamics of the illness.

There are many reasons why Szeged is one of the most famous cities in Hungary. It is not only exciting and beautiful, but it also has an excellent university, the University of Szeged. This institute has high-quality education in the field of medicine. As we previously reported, in 2017 SZTE has gained 68.7 million euros benefit from the Hungarian government. They improved their health care services and education infrastructure. 2018 also seems to be a year of success at this university!

Defibrillator in the brain? Whose idea is it?

Antal Berényi is a lecturer of the Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine. He leads the Lendület Programme of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and SZTE’s Oscillatory Neural Network Research Group. It aims to develop a new therapy procedure for patients with epilepsy, for whom medicine treatments do not work.

The main idea of the programme is that the defibrillator uses just the right amount of electrical energy to stop the attack. It goes off only at the right time.

How does the defibrillator work?

Nature Communications, a prestigious newspaper, presented the world-class result of the five-year-long interdisciplinary work. The device works similarly to a pacemaker. According to the central idea, a lot of impulses reach the head in multiple places. When they follow each other with the right speed, nerve cells unite them into one stimulation. This way the side-effect is scattered by the scalp or the electrodes under it, but the effect inside of the brain is added up, so it stimulates the nerve cells.