Researchers create device to detect and treat seizures

Device consists of a sensor that detects nerve signals, and a small ion pump that doses the neurotransmitter GABA

Swedish and French researchers have developed a device which can detect an epileptic seizure and issue a dose of a substance to effectively stop it.

Researchers at Linköping University worked in collaboration with French colleagues to develop a small 20×20 µm device that consists of a sensor that detects nerve signals, and a small ion pump that doses an exact amount of the neurotransmitter GABA, a substance the body uses to inhibit stimuli in the central nervous system. The device is manufactured from conductive, biocompatible plastic.

There are more than 40 medicines currently available to treat epilepsy, but when these are taken orally or injected into the bloodstream, they often end up where they are not needed and may cause serious side effects.

Assistant Professor Daniel Simon, from the Laboratory for Organic Electronics at LiU’s Campus Norrköping, said: “Our technology makes it possible to interact with both healthy and sick neurons. We can now start investigating opportunities for finding therapies for neurological illnesses that arise so rapidly and so locally that the patient doesn’t notice them.”

The small ion pump, which was developed at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics, attracted attention when its first application as a therapeutic device was published a year ago. The sensor that captures the nerve signal has subsequently been developed by the LiU researchers’ collaborators at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines in Gardanne, France.

The results, from the Laboratory for Organic Electronics at LiU’s Campus Norrköping, have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.