Epilepsy and surgical mapping

Drug treatment resistant epilepsy is an important public health problem. Patients with epilepsy of focal origin may have an excellent outcome following surgery that removes the source of seizures. Identification of the precise cortical region producing seizures is crucial to a good outcome; additionally, identification of eloquent cortical areas near the region to be resected is essential to prevent postoperative neurological deficit. A wide range of imaging techniques is valuable for imaging the epileptogenic zone, including high-resolution T1 MRI, T2 signal quantitation, MR spectroscopy, diffusion imaging, PET, SPECT and simultaneous EEG-fMRI. Eloquent cortex has in the past been mapped using highly invasive techniques; fMRI of motor and cognitive tasks holds great promise for future non-invasive mapping strategies. Epilepsy is a common disorder affecting approximately 0.5–1 % of the population in industrialised countries1. Approximately 20 % of people with epilepsy continue to have seizures despite adequate anti-epileptic drug treatment; the majority of these cases suffer from localisation