Ultrasonic therapies for seizures and drug-resistant epilepsy

Carena Cornelssen; Eli Finlinson; John D Rolston; Karen S Wilcox

doi:10.3389/fneur.2023.1301956

Ultrasonic therapies for seizures and drug-resistant epilepsy

Front Neurol. 2023 Dec 12:14:1301956. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2023.1301956. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Carena Cornelssen^{1

2}, Eli Finlinson^{1

2}, John D Rolston^{1

3}, Karen S Wilcox^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States.
² Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States.
³ Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
⁴ Interdepartmental Program in Neuroscience, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States.

Abstract

Ultrasonic therapy is an increasingly promising approach for the treatment of seizures and drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE). Therapeutic focused ultrasound (FUS) uses thermal or nonthermal energy to either ablate neural tissue or modulate neural activity through high- or low-intensity FUS (HIFU, LIFU), respectively. Both HIFU and LIFU approaches have been investigated for reducing seizure activity in DRE, and additional FUS applications include disrupting the blood-brain barrier in the presence of microbubbles for targeted-drug delivery to the seizure foci. Here, we review the preclinical and clinical studies that have used FUS to treat seizures. Additionally, we review effective FUS parameters and consider limitations and future directions of FUS with respect to the treatment of DRE. While detailed studies to optimize FUS applications are ongoing, FUS has established itself as a potential noninvasive alternative for the treatment of DRE and other neurological disorders.

Keywords: animal models of epilepsy; clinical epilepsy research; drug-resistant epilepsy; focused ultrasound; high-intensity focused ultrasound; low-intensity focused ultrasound; seizures; therapeutic ultrasound.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (1747505; CC) and Richard L. Stimson endowed funds (KW).