NICU mothers are under significant stress and appropriate counseling targeted towards specific stressors is required.

Counseling of mothers whose babies are admitted to the NICU with regards to various aspects of the infant`s environment and condition was significantly effective in reducing the stress levels of mothers.

No abstract

About 30% of children with drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) continue to have seizures after epilepsy surgery. Since epilepsy is increasingly conceptualized as a network disorder, understanding how brain regions interact may be critical for planning re-operation in these patients. We aimed to estimate functional brain connectivity using scalp EEG and its evolution over time in patients who had repeated surgery (RS-group, n = 9) and patients who had one successful surgery (seizure-free, SF-group, n = 12). We analyzed EEGs without epileptiform activity at varying time points (before and after each surgery). We estimated functional connectivity between cortical regions and their relative centrality within the network. We compared the pre- and post-surgical centrality of all the non-resected (untouched) regions (far or adjacent to resection) for each group (using the Wilcoxon signed rank test). In alpha, theta, and beta frequency bands, the post-surgical centrality of the untouched cortical regions increased in the SF group (p < 0.001) whereas they decreased (p < 0.05) or did not change (p > 0.05) in the RS group after failed surgeries; when re-operation was successful, the post-surgical centrality of far regions increased (p < 0.05). Our data suggest that removal of the epileptogenic focus in children with DRE leads to a gain in the network centrality of the untouched areas. In contrast, unaltered or decreased connectivity is seen when seizures persist after surgery.