Brian Lee
University of Southern California, CA·Neuroscience
Mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) is a common form of epilepsy in which seizures arise from deep structures in the temporal lobe. It is often treated by surgically removing or destroying part of the hippocampus, a brain region central to memory.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Psychology
- Topics
mesial temporal lobe epilepsy
epilepsy surgery
hippocampus
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2028
What they work on
- Determine which hippocampal subregion to stimulate, the head, the body or both, through SEEG depth electrodes to produce temporary verbal recognition memory impairment in epilepsy patients.
- Test whether electrical stimulation of the hippocampus during memory encoding, during retrieval, or during both phases best impairs verbal recognition memory, using a Wada-matched testing design.
- Compare hippocampal stimulation at 5 Hz, matching the region's natural rhythm, with 50 Hz, a clinical standard for disrupting brain tissue, to find which better produces memory impairment.
More about the research
Many patients are left with memory problems afterward. Surgeons have few ways to predict these losses in advance, so better tools could help patients and doctors weigh the risks of surgery.
Why it matters
Patients undergoing hippocampal surgery or laser ablation for mesial temporal lobe epilepsy often lose memory function. A stimulation test using electrodes that some patients already need could let surgeons preview those deficits at the precise scale of the planned surgery. This could help patients and clinicians make better-informed surgical decisions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nishant Sinha
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Build scalable pipelines that automatically aggregate and jointly analyze structural MRI, intracranial EEG (IEEG) and clinical data from multiple epilepsy centers, so analyses generalize across sites.
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.
Barna Dudok
Baylor College of Medicine, TX·Neuroscience·Early-career
Test whether CCK and PV basket cells, two types of inhibitory neurons, are active in different brain states in a kainate mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy, using two-photon calcium imaging with hippocampal field recordings.
The school
University of Southern California: 47 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 882 research doctorates a year.
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