Scalp Implant Improves Real-World Epilepsy Tracking

Key TakeawaysA new under-the-scalp implant can improve monitoring of epilepsyThe implant better traced epileptic activity than seizure diaries kept by patientsThe device also was better at judging the type of seizure a person had endured.THURSDAY, Aug. 14, 2025 (HealthDay News) — An under-the-scalp implant can improve monitoring of a person’s epilepsy, giving doctors data they need to improve control over seizures, a new pilot study says.Epilepsy patients must now keep a diary to track their symptoms.But these self-observations are only right about half the time, researchers found when they compared patients’ diaries to tens of thousands of hours of brainwave data collected by an implant.“A small tracker placed under the skin was able to detect seizures far more accurately than the participants themselves,” senior researcher Mark Richardson, head of the School of Neuroscience at King’s College London in the U.K., said in a news release.Symptom diaries are unreliable because people with epilepsy can experience seizures without realizing it, due to impairment of consciousness or memory loss, researchers said in background notes. Patients might also misinterpret symptoms as seizures, when they are not.But such data is needed to help dial in the medication people need to control their seizures, researchers said. About a third of people with epilepsy continue to have ongoing seizures despite being prescribed anti-seizure drugs.“It is vital that people with treatment-resistant epilepsy are able to access the best possible care,” Richardson said. “This is made significantly more challenging by the fact that clinicians must rely on patient reporting to establish when episodes have taken place.”For this study, researchers tested an AI-powered electroencephalography (EEG) implant that can track brain wave data. It’s about the size of a U.K. pound coin.Placed under the scalp behind an ear, the implant is attached to a small wire leading to where seizures are expected to start in the patient’s brain, researchers said.The implant wirelessly communicates with an external recorder that collects the brainwave data, researchers said. The research team implanted the device in 10 U.K. adults with treatment-resistant epilepsy and tracked their brain data for 15 months. The participants also kept a seizure diary and recorded their health using a wearable fitness tracker.By the end, researchers had collected nearly 72,000 hours of real-world brainwave data, including 754 seizures, results show.Researchers found the participants had correctly recorded just 48% of their seizures, when comparing their diaries to the collected brainwave data.In addition, about a quarter (27%) of the episodes they’d recorded in their diaries weren’t associated with actual seizure activity, researchers said.The implant also was better at accurately tracking the specific type of seizure a person had experienced, compared to the patient’s own recollections.“The ability to monitor seizures in the real world, accurately collecting data on the type and timing that they occur will be an invaluable tool for clinicians moving forwards, and should hopefully have a big impact on how we approach the treatment of this life-threatening condition,” lead researcher Dr. Pedro Viana said in a news release. He’s a senior clinical research fellow and neurologist at King’s College London.However, researchers noted that the device needs to be tested in larger groups of people before it can be put on the market.“While this is an important step forwards, it’s now vital that we conduct larger trials to further validate this technology, with a view to hopefully making this available to everyone in need,” Viana said.The new study appears in the journal Epilepsia, and was funded by the Epilepsy Foundation of America.More informationThe Epilepsy Foundation has more on epilepsy.SOURCE: King’s College London, news release, Aug. 11, 2025 .What This Means For YouIn the future, implants might be available to track epileptic activity accurately and help doctors adjust treatment..Sign up for our weekly HealthDay newsletter