What connects a toothbrush, an MRI and brain surgery?

Amber Starlight’s life as a teen was dictated by her seizures, sometimes happening several times a day. Her doctor knew something had to be done to gain seizure control – but with so many treatment routes to go down, it could be a long and challenging road ahead.    

Luckily for Amber, it was an unusual cause of her seizures that proved to be the key: brushing her teeth.  

The latest technology in imaging, particularly in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allows us to see the brain and its activity in an entirely new way. Researchers are finding new ways to push the boundaries of this technology every day.  

Amber’s experience of triggering a seizure during an advanced MRI scan enabled her doctors to take decisive action. And because they were able to see the precise location of the brain that they needed to treat, they were able to perform necessary surgery in a far less invasive way.  

In this episode, we speak to: patient Amber Starlight; neurologist Dr David Vaughan who is also a clinical researcher at The Florey and works on how MRIs can pinpoint sites for brain surgery; and physicist Associate Professor Heath Pardoe, head of neuroimaging at The Florey, who is interested in using neuroimaging to measure brain health.