Chang, Englot obtain $three million NIH grant for epilepsy imaging work | Information | Faculty of Engineering

A staff led by an engineering professor who makes a speciality of strategies to research useful neuroimaging knowledge and a neurosurgeon-scientist has obtained a $three million NIH grant for epilepsy analysis.

That is the third main NIH R01 primary analysis grant Vanderbilt Faculty of Engineering and Vanderbilt College Medical Heart groups have obtained in lower than a 12 months to advance understanding of the dysfunction. The whole exceeds $eight million.

Catie Chang, assistant professor of laptop science, electrical engineering, laptop engineering and biomedical engineering, and Dario Englot, VUMC surgical director of epilepsy and assistant professor of neurological surgical procedure, electrical engineering, radiology and radiological sciences and biomedical engineering, will examine disturbances in mind networks associated to consideration lapses and cognitive deficits in sufferers with temporal lobe epilepsy.

Utilizing a novel strategy that integrates multi-modal imaging with in-depth neurocognitive assessments, the venture goals to determine particular areas of mind connectivity the place vigilance, or sustained consideration, is disturbed and will contribute to neurocognitive decline.

The staff believes consciousness-impairing seizures in TLE could trigger useful connectivity disturbances between subcortical vigilance facilities and the cortex. The venture will contain neuroimaging research that relate vigilance to mind connectivity, cognition to vigilance, and connectivity to cognition. They hope understanding these mind community issues could result in new surgical or behavioral interventions to enhance the standard of life for epilepsy sufferers.

“By integrating these neuroimaging and cognitive measurements, we will deeply examine the hyperlinks between them and achieve a extra full understanding of human mind networks concerned in vigilance,” Chang mentioned.

Her experience is in multi-modal imaging of dynamic mind states; time-resolved evaluation of useful networks; neural and physiological foundation of fMRI indicators/networks; and strategies for enhancing the standard of fMRI knowledge. The analysis will embrace utilizing simultaneous fMRI-EEG and evaluate measures of wholesome management sufferers with these of sufferers who’ve TLE.

“We hope to fill a crucial hole in our understanding of the mind community mechanisms underlying neurocognitive issues in TLE,” Englot mentioned. “The outcomes may even inform medical remedy selections in TLE, and will assist us discover new targets for mind stimulation therapies.”

Chang and Englot are associates with the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgical procedure and Engineering and the Vanderbilt College Institute of Imaging Science.

About 1 p.c of the inhabitants has temporal lobe epilepsy, the commonest kind of epilepsy. A devastating neurological dysfunction, TLE causes sufferers to have frequent consciousness-impairing seizures, broad neurocognitive deficits, and a diminished high quality of life. These seizures originate within the hippocampus or amygdala, but TLE sufferers present cognitive deficits not related to temporal lobe perform, together with declines in government perform, cognitive processing velocity, and a focus.

Individually, a staff led by Victoria Morgan, affiliate professor of biomedical engineering and radiology and radiological sciences, has obtained $5 million in NIH grants to develop early biomarkers of remedy outcomes for sufferers with temporal lobe epilepsy primarily based on their particular person mind networks. The staff consists of Englot and Bennett Landman, affiliate professor {of electrical} engineering.