FUNCTIONAL ELECTRICAL STIMULATION FOR CONTROL OF EPILEPTIC SEIZURES

Nearly 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy and one-third of them do not respond well to any antiepileptic drugs. Given the large population of patients experiencing drug resistant epilepsy, increased attention has been paid over the last two decades to the development of electrical stimulation therapies as alternative antiepileptic treatments. In spite of these developments, the antiepileptic efficacy of such electrical stimulation therapies is still relatively low. One reason for not being able to increase this efficacy is the limited knowledge about the effect of the stimulation parameters regarding their ability to inhibit seizures.

The present thesis hypothesized that the antiepileptic effects of vagus nerve stimulation and spinal cord stimulation could be improved by using higher stimulation frequencies than those that are currently used in clinic or proposed in the literature.