Stopping electrical firestorms in the brain

Saturday 7 December 2013 12:21PM (view full episode)

A brain seizure can affect anyone at any time. And it can lead to death. The brain exists in a delicate balance of electrical pulses.  But if the balance is tipped too far, the electrical signals can behave like a runaway chain reaction producing an electrical firestorm. We see this as violent convulsions, frothing at the mouth and eyes rolled back.  It is thought a brain seizure always involves the olfactory sensing area of the brain. Jennifer Robertson is focussing on this area of the brain hoping to find a way of stopping the electrical firestorm spreading when it is present as just a flicker.

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Jennifer Robertson: So any one of you, anywhere, at any time could have a seizure and die. Just like that. As you sit here today your brain cells are firing electrical signals that can excite or inhibit other cells. This results in a delicate balance of excitation and inhibition, and if you tip that balance too far in either direction, you could end up dead. On the excitation side, your cells begin to fire more, causing more cells to fire which cause more cells and more cells until an electrical fire storm rips through your brain. On the outside you are violently convulsing, your eyes have rolled back, you are frothing at the mouth. You are having a seizure.

There are many different triggers for seizures, including genetics, high temperatures, or even just a simple bump on the head. So for my PhD I don't want to stop seizures from starting (there are way too many factors influencing that), instead I want to stop them from spreading and becoming life-threatening. In other words, I want to stop the electrical fire storm when it's just a little spark.

After delving into the extensive literature I found out that different patients had seizures that started in different regions of the brain but all spread through one tiny region before spreading to the whole brain, one single region. And curiously, it's the part of the brain that processes smell. I was pretty excited by this finding, so I began following my nose and started sniffing around this universal gateway to epileptic seizures.

One of my methods involves filling the cells with a fluorescent dye that makes them light up when they send an electrical signal, kind of like hundreds of little torches flashing out Morse code. But when a seizure comes through, they all light up at once, meaning any code is lost. We then analyse these flashing cells using programs based on those developed by astrophysicists to study the stars. By applying different electrical and pharmacological manipulations we can then determine why these cells suddenly start spreading life-threatening seizures instead of informing you that, 'phwoar, someone had beans for lunch'.

Now, there's a lot of sniffing around still required before we can completely understand this universal gateway to electrical firestorms or seizures, and more still to work out how to block them. But I hope you'll agree it's worth the effort. After all, a seizure could happen to any of us.

Robyn Williams: Before you go, two little questions. Didn't anyone know that there was an association with the smelling part of the brain?

Jennifer Robertson: Interestingly epilepsy is a condition that has been known about for millennia, back to Hippocrates, and even in those times they knew about the aura of smell that quite often happens before someone has a seizure. But when we started looking into the brain and the electrical properties of it, other brain regions became more popular in epilepsy research, and it's only really since we've discovered that seizures are spreading through this region that it has once again become more popular.

Robyn Williams: You were saying about the Greeks when people said there was an aura of smell, is that because the person having a seizure was smelly?

Jennifer Robertson: Unfortunately not, they are considered to be quite unusual types of smell.

Robyn Williams: So it was the person who was the patient, if you like, who felt smells or something like that.

Jennifer Robertson: Yes, so they had a sensation of smell. So usually it can be quite a bitter smell and quite intense, and interestingly sometimes they don't remember having that smell sensation after the seizure has passed.

Robyn Williams: Yes, but at the time if you are aware of it, it's a warning.

Jennifer Robertson: Yes, it is.

Robyn Williams: The second question really is how did you know how to associate the astrophysics part, astronomy part, with seizures?

Jennifer Robertson: I did physics as part of my undergraduate degree, and one of the things we did in that was looking at the different intensity changes of stars in galaxies as one of our small undergrad projects. So when I started looking at these different flashing cells, the process that we used to measure the intensity changes and to detect cells was quite similar to what we had used in physics.

Robyn Williams: Sounds terrific, thank you very much.

Jennifer Robertson: No worries, thank you.

Robyn Williams: And by the way, have you read The Idiot by Dostoevsky?

Jennifer Robertson: No, I haven't.

Robyn Williams: It might be an idea.

Jennifer Robertson: Will do.

Robyn Williams: Jennifer Robertson from the Australian National University, showing you how science is interconnected, and how using astronomy can perhaps save your life. She is at the Eccles Institute, and it's now 50 years since Jack Eccles got his Nobel Prize.


Jennifer Robertson
PhD Candidate
Eccles Institute of Neuroscience
The John Curtin School of Medical Research
Australian National University
Canberra ACT


Robyn Williams
David Fisher

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