Changes In The Brain That Cause Epilepsy

Abstract

About 100 000 people currently suffer from epilepsy in Australia and of these about one third are poorly controlled with current anti-epileptic drugs. It is therefore important to continue to develop novel modes of treatment for this debilitating disease. This projects investigates an ion channel, known as the HCN channel, that is thought to be involved in making a brain epileptic. We explore how changes in this channel can make a brain more excitable. Also, our group is the first in the world to discover a mutation in this channel that is linked to epilepsy. We will also investigate how this mutation changes the channel properties to make a brain more likely to be epileptic. The HCN channel..