UF researchers combine AI and brain mapping to advance personalized epilepsy surgery

For people with drug-resistant epilepsy, surgery can offer a life-changing opportunity to control seizures. But it can also come with questions about how a procedure could affect language, memory and communication.

A new $2.32 million NIH-funded project led by the University of Florida aims to give patients, families and clinicians more personalized information to help answer those questions before surgery takes place.

Led by Abbas Babajani-Feremi, Ph.D., associate professor in the UF Department of Neurology and director of the Magnetoencephalography or MEG, Laboratory at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at UF Health, the project will combine advanced brain mapping, intracranial recordings and artificial intelligence to predict how different surgical approaches could affect a patient’s language function. UF is collaborating with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center on this project.

“For a patient and family, one of the most difficult questions is not only, ‘Will surgery control the seizures?’ but also, ‘What might I lose because of the surgery?’” Babajani-Feremi said.