For those most severely affected, treating epilepsy means
drilling through the skull deep into the brain to destroy the small area where
the seizures originate – invasive, dangerous and with a long recovery period.
Five years ago, a team of Vanderbilt engineers wondered: Is
it possible to address epileptic seizures in a less invasive way? They decided
it would be possible. Because the area of the brain involved is the
hippocampus, which is located at the bottom of the brain, they could develop a
robotic device that pokes through the cheek and enters the brain from
underneath which avoids having to drill through the skull and is much closer to
the target area