Department of Neurological Surgery

Successful epilepsy surgery can improve brain connectivity like patterns seen in people without epilepsy, according to a new study.

With the aid of $2.5 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Vanderbilt researchers are on a quest to develop early biomarkers of treatment outcomes for patients with temporal lobe epilepsy based on their individual brain networks.

New epilepsy monitoring systems at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are providing neurologists better data for assessing adult and pediatric patients.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new clinical recommendations for health care providers treating children with mild traumatic brain injury, often referred to as concussion.

Surgeons face a delicate proposition when treating acoustic neuromas, benign tumors on the nerve that affect hearing and balance. Removing small tumors through surgery and radiation can cause complications such as the loss of hearing, when the tumors may not grow and impact quality of life for years. But not removing them can allow them to grow and be more difficult to remove and pose even greater risks.

New research from Vanderbilt suggests that repeated seizures reduce brainstem connectivity, a possible contributor to unexplained neurocognitive problems in epilepsy patients.