International Women's Day

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is to accelerate action for gender equality so we grabbed five minutes with the incredible consultant neurologist and epilepsy researcher, Dr Meneka Kaur Sidhu.

Meneka knew she wanted to be a doctor from a young age and gained practical work experience at her mum’s medical clinic. She learnt about the impact of Parkinson’s and epilepsy on people when she was younger and when she went to university to study medicine she continued to be interested in how treatments evolve. 

She chose to pursue her career as a clinical academic so she could advance medical treatments through her research. Meneka recognises the role of Epilepsy Society in supporting and funding her work. 

Meneka has recently completed a ten-year research study, studying a group of people who had undergone brain surgery to treat their epilepsy. Researchers wanted to see how their memory function changed over time. The team compared a group of people who had undergone epilepsy surgery with a healthy control group. They assessed memory function at four months, ten months and then ten years after surgery. The study showed that memory networks contribute to long-term verbal and visual memory recovery. It demonstrated the importance of surgical intervention avoiding areas of the brain that are critical for memory reorganisation. Importantly, it showed that 10 years after surgery, people were taking a reduced number of anti-seizure medications, were experiencing sustained seizure freedom and cognitive stabilisation or improvement. This study will inform future operations as surgeons will know more precisely how to cut out the affected area of the brain. 

You can read the article at Nature Long-term memory plasticity in a decade-long connectivity study post anterior temporal lobe resection | Nature Communications