PhD studentship - Assessing seizure susceptibility using psychophysical tests

This is a project which would suit someone with excellent programming, mathematics and statistics skills, who is seeking a project where they can put these skills to use in a worthwhile area offering extensive interaction with patients and members of the public.

Background

When the brain is working normally, activity is kept tightly focused as it is processed from one area to the next. This focus is maintained by groups of inhibitory neurons. In some people however, these cells malfunction, and then activity can rapidly escalate to become an epileptic seizure. Since these cells perform such an important protective role, it would be incredibly useful if we could assess how well they can do this job, before problems progress to the point of a seizure. The research question for this studentship will determine whether this may be assessed using simple visual tests.

Vision is about the best studied of all brain functions, and there are several well described visual phenomena which involve cortical inhibition. The project will use these visual assays to monitor cortical inhibition in people with various epilepsy phenotypes. We hope then to develop this into a tool that patients with epilepsy could use in their own home to help them predict when a seizure is likely to occur. By doing this we will help to empower patients with epilepsy, to take control of their own condition. The project will involve a range of tasks, from software programming to patient interaction, and extends from basic research ideas into clinical practice.