As John Mirasola sat reading a college textbook nearly 18 years ago, a strange thing happened. A few of the words on each page disappeared as though they had been whited out. “It was just little white spots, and then it would come back,” said the 39-year-old. Unfortunately, the incident was a prelude to a neurological condition that would worsen and eventually thrust him into the frontier of brain research.
A few months later, after suffering his first seizure, Mirasola was diagnosed with epilepsy, a condition caused by electrical disturbances emanating from deep within his brain. As the source of his seizures, the faulty impulses have beaten the best of what modern medicine has to offer.
His epilepsy has remained uncontrolled, dominating his life and costing him two jobs and his driving privileges. Last month, he took a plunge into an arcane field of medical science that is in its infancy, a discipline known as neurostimulation.
In a five-hour operation, doctors at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison inserted two thin electrodes about five inches into his brain, at the back of his head. They carved out a section of his skull that was deep enough to cradle a device about the size of an iPod Shuffle, and his scalp was pulled back over the device.