Chu Lab at MGH, Boston, MA (2025)

Benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BECTS) is the most common childhood epilepsy syndrome, accounting for 20% of all childhood epilepsy and characterized by a transient period of seizure susceptibility of uncertain duration in school-age children. Despite extensive clinical experience with this disease, it remains a challenge to determine who will benefit from antiepileptic drug (AED) treatment and when it is safe to discontinue. Current clinical practice requires a trial-and-fail method for AED initiation and discontinuation with wide variability and controversy in treatment strategies across practitioners. Although non-treatment or premature taper may result in seizures and injury, chronic AED exposure is also not benign and may cause attentional deficits, aggression, hostility, nervousness, and somnolence in 30-70% of exposed children. A biomarker to isolate which children are at risk for ongoing seizures would help to avoid the unnecessary consequences of over- or under-medication during critical years of cognitive, psychosocial and behavioral maturation in this large cohort of children. In this work, we use advanced, safe, non-invasive multimodal recording techniques from quantitative neurophysiology, structural, and functional neuroimaging to develop objective measures of seizure risk and cognitive function in children with BECTS. By focusing on this unique, well-characterized, though poorly understood patient population over the course of this transient disease, we also aim to identify candidate biomarkers of seizure risk which may have a broader relevance to other epilepsy syndromes.

11/11/2021

We are recruiting children with Rolandic epilepsy (e.g. benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes) and children without epilepsy, aged 6-18 years old, for a non-invasive brain imaging study using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Magnetoencephalography(MEG), Electroencephalography (EEG), and experimental tasks.

Subjects will come to the Massachusetts General Hospital Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging for 1-2 visits lasting about 8 hours overall. Compensation will be up to $100 per visit, provided in gift cards to Amazon.com. Parking costs for participation in the study will be reimbursed and meals will be provided. Subjects will be encouraged to sleep or watch a movie during the imaging studies.

Click "Contact Us" or visit our website to learn more about this study! http://chulab.mgh.harvard.edu

12/07/2020

We are recruiting children with Rolandic epilepsy (e.g. benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes) and children without epilepsy, aged 4-18 years old, for a non-invasive brain imaging study using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Magnetoencephalography(MEG), Electroencephalography (EEG), and experimental tasks.

Subjects will come to the Massachusetts General Hospital Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging for 1-2 visits lasting about 8 hours overall. Compensation will be up to $100, provided in $50 gift cards to Amazon.com. Parking costs for participation in the study will be reimbursed and meals will be provided. Subjects will be encouraged to sleep or watch a movie during the imaging studies.

Click "Contact Us" or visit our website to learn more about this study! http://chulab.mgh.harvard.edu

Welcome to the Chu Lab! Our clinical epilepsy laboratory at MGH employs non-invasive and invasive anatomical and physiological imaging techniques to better understand the abnormal cortical processes underlying seizures and cognitive dysfunction in epilepsy. Through this work, we aim to understand th...

09/23/2016

We are recruiting children with benign childhood epilepsy (benign rolandic epilepsy, benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes) and healthy children without epilepsy, aged 6 years old and above, for a non-invasive brain imaging study to identify markers to predict ongoing seizure risk or cognitive effects in childhood epilepsy using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Magnetoencephalography (MEG), Electroencephalography (EEG), and neuropsychological testing.

Subjects will come to the Massachusetts General Hospital Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and the Psychology Assessment Center for 1 visit each, lasting 2-6 hours. Compensation will be up to $200, provided in $50 gift cards to Visa or Amazon.com. Parking costs for participation in the study will be reimbursed.

Click "Contact Us" or visit our website to learn more about this study!

Welcome to the Chu lab! Our clinical epilepsy laboratory at MGH employs combined non-invasive anatomical and physiological imaging techniques to better understand the abnormal cortical processes underlying epilepsy, with an emphasis on development and pediatric disease. Through this work, we aim to…

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Boston, MA
02114

Website

http://chulab.mgh.harvard.edu/bects-participation/

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