Though it is still in its experimental stages I watched (I believe it was on NBC News with Brian Williams within the last two weeks). The experimental device was implanted just under the skin next to her skull on the top of her head to one side on a girl about 15 to 17 years old that drugs could not prevent her seizures from happening. As I understood this, the electrodes had to be inserted into the top of the brain and the device itself looked to be the size of a small thumb drive that one moves small amounts of information from one laptop or desktop computer with or smaller that could be hidden by the hair completely. For those of you not used to using thumb drives they are smaller than most thums and about the size of my little finger(however, I'm 6 feet 4 1/2 inches tall so my hands are pretty big). The microprocessor detects the brainwaves that usually come just before a seizure and by pulsing a certain amount of electricity directly into the brain prevents completely any seizures at all. So, from what I gathered no drugs at all(at least in regard to seizures)would be necessary with a device like this implanted into a person who has seizures. Even though this device was specifically designed for epileptics with extreme Grand Mal seizures it is possible that this device could potentially help people with almost any kind of seizures as well to prevent them from happening. So, for people like myself who actually had childhood epilepsy from ages 10 to 15 years of age this makes me very happy for all those whose seizures haven't been controlled yet.
It appears to be a very small microprocessor driven device that can detect different types of brain waves and when it detects pre-seizure types of brainwaves it gives the brain an electric jolt and the seizure doesn't happen ever. So, as this device is perfected it is possible that no one (at least with this type of device) need ever have an epileptic seizure ever again.
For me, this is really great news!
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