Dominique Durand
Case Western Reserve University, OH·Biomedical Engineering
Brain cells usually talk to each other through synapses, the junctions where chemical messages pass between neurons. But neurons also produce weak electric fields that can influence nearby cells directly.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Neuroscience
Engineering
- Topics
epilepsy
seizures
ephaptic coupling
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through May 2031
What they work on
- Test whether an extracellular voltage clamp, which holds the electric field around neurons steady, prevents neurons from firing in sync in overexcitable brain tissue, using electrophysiology, neural imaging and computer models.
- Develop the extracellular voltage clamp for use in live rodents and determine how it controls seizures, including the role of the space between cells in how well it works.
- Test whether ephaptic coupling, the direct influence of neurons' electric fields on neighbors, explains how transcranial electric stimulation (TES) changes the travel speed of interictal spikes and suppresses seizures, using voltage imaging and optogenetics in transgenic mice.
- Determine whether ephaptic coupling underlies TES-induced changes in brain oscillations, the rhythmic waves of neural activity, through in-vivo electrophysiological recordings.
- Test whether signals through the corpus callosum, the fiber bundle linking the brain's two halves, can identify which side seizures start on and track brain excitability in real time.
- Test whether low-frequency stimulation of the corpus callosum can prevent seizures from spreading between the two sides of the brain.
More about the research
This effect, called ephaptic coupling or electric field coupling, may help seizures spread and may explain how mild electrical stimulation of the brain works. About one-third of people with epilepsy have seizures that drugs cannot control, so new ways to monitor and stop seizures are needed. The lab's projects study how electric fields and brain pathways shape seizures, and use this to design stimulation-based therapies.
Why it matters
Many people with epilepsy do not respond to medication and cannot have surgery. This work could lead to devices that prevent seizures at very low current, less invasive ways to find where seizures start and when the brain is at risk, and better-designed non-invasive brain stimulation for epilepsy and other neural disorders.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Martha Streng
University of Minnesota, MN·Neuroscience·Early-career
Use mesoscale calcium imaging of the cerebellar cortex in mice to determine how chronic, spontaneous seizures from the hippocampus alter cerebellar activity.
Mesut Sahin
New Jersey Institute of Technology, NJ·Biomedical Engineering
Develop focused ultrasound protocols that directly stimulate the deep cerebellar nuclei, the cerebellum's output centers, without surgery, and identify settings that selectively activate specific neuron types.
Joline Fan
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Identify physiologic brain network dynamics across sleep and wake states in patients with focal epilepsy, using magnetoencephalography (MEG) combined with diffusion tensor imaging and tractography of white-matter connections.
The school
Case Western Reserve University: 34 labs on PI Pages, $643M a year on research, 213 research doctorates a year.
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