Stimulation of the Thalamus for Arousal Restoral in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Stimulation of the bilateral thalamic CL is a promising approach in human patients to improve conscious arousal. To restore conscious arousal by stimulation of the thalamic intralaminar CL it is necessary to provide bilateral stimulation, placing one lead in each thalamus. Bilateral thalamic CL stimulation was shown previously to improve human conscious arousal and is based on existing research in patients with disorders of consciousness.

The hippocampus has been a target for brain stimulation for seizure reduction in epilepsy. While the efficacy of HC stimulation varies considerably among different studies, the surgical procedure and therapeutic electrical stimulation are well tolerated by patients, with few peri-operative complications being reported, and histopathologic analysis not revealing a difference between stimulated and non-stimulated hippocampal tissue (Han et al. 2014)