Cortical Excitability in West Syndrome Using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Currently, no literature is available regarding degree of cortical excitability and its correlation with various epileptic syndromes and disorders such as West Syndrome in pediatric age group. Studying the complex interaction of cortical excitability, seizures, neurobehavioral patterns and brain maturation in children may provide valuable information and new insights about the underlying neuropathogenic pathways in childhood epilepsy. West Syndrome is a unique epilepsy syndrome amalgamating infantile onset epilepsy with significant neurodevelopmental delay. Due to this reason, it is the ideal disorder to study this complex interaction. How cortical excitability correlates with disease activity in West Syndrome is speculative. The ability of disease characteristics such as degree of cortical excitability to predict successful outcome after ACTH therapy (non-invasive biomarker of treatment response) in children with West Syndrome has not been explored. Most importantly, the present study may be a hypothesis generating initial step bringing new insights into neurocognitive effects of seizures, seizure pathogenesis, individualized antiepileptic drug therapy and for studying treatment response. The investigators aim to determine the change in cortical excitability pre and post ACTH therapy, in children with West syndrome and whether the change predicts responsiveness to ACTH therapy, in terms of reduction in spasm frequency at 12 weeks.