The future of pediatric epilepsy surgery. Signposts and science.

Many of the advances in pediatric epilepsy surgery should reflect scientific, technical, and conceptual issues identical to those seen with adult epilepsy surgery. However, there are certainly some unique issues involving the developing brain, and these aspects require significant input from the discipline of developmental neurobiology and the study of cortical plasticity. These developmental disciplines may prove as critical as more traditional areas of electrophysiology thought to be key to the advancement of epilepsy surgery. Pediatric epilepsy surgery may turn out to be the major beneficiary of the basic scientific advancements in these burgeoning fields.