Utopian Lab: Epilepsy

Epilepsy can present symptomatically in a variety of different ways, with different patterns of epileptic seizure affecting different people. This not only makes epilepsy difficult to diagnose, it render these experiences of different epilepsy patients unique.

In the course of its epilepsy-based research, Richardson Lab attempts to study the brain as an entire functioning system. Using brain-scanning techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), researchers can record images and electrical activity from the brain.

This audio-visual installation presents the MRI and EEG results of an epileptic group of patients and compares them to results of a non-epileptic (control) group. Alongside this data, recordings play in which epilepsy patients recount their personal experiences with the disease. These combined outputs draw together existing struggles in the treatment and management of a disease which evades strict definition, and the hope of both patients and researchers, that in the future everyone will be free of this condition that debilitates both mind and body.

This project is part of the Utopian lab, a contemporary glimpse of the Health Faculties at King’s College London. The crusade to understand, save and compliment the human body and mind is the spirit of Utopia itself, uniting cultures, defining humanity and standing on the shoulders of giants.