A COMPUTER model that identifies the parts of a person’s brain responsible for epileptic seizures could be used to design personalised surgical procedures, according to researchers in the North-East.

Scientists at Newcastle University have used brain scans from patients with the most common type of epilepsy, temporal lobe epilepsy, and computer modelling techniques to look at the brain as an example of a computer network.

By simulating brain activity within each patient-specific network, they successfully identified regions that were more prone to seizures.

The research has been published and is believed to be the first study to combine computational modelling of brain dynamics with patient-specific MRI data from individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy.

About one in a hundred people suffer from epilepsy and, in many cases, it is an extremely debilitating illness.

Currently, anti-convulsant drugs are the main treatment but these are not always effective.

In these cases, surgical removal of the parts of the brain indicated by readings to show the source of the seizure is carried out.

But in about 30 per cent of cases, surgery does not result in preventing seizures.

Dr Peter Taylor, who co-led the study, said: “This research may help to explain why surgery is so often unsuccessful, as this work predicts that the areas most commonly removed in surgery are not always involved in starting and spreading seizures.

“It also takes us a step further towards rectifying the problem, as identifying the most seizure prone areas on an individual basis has the potential to show when the usual surgery procedures may not work for a patient.”