Recent advances in systems neuroscience have shifted our understanding of brain functions from being attributed to individual nuclei or regions, to instead being distributed across multiple interacting anatomical areas or cellular populations. Similarly, it is becoming increasingly clear that in epilepsy, seizures and pathological activity emerge from large-scale cellular networks. 

 

As a lab, we study genetic and induced in vivo animal models of epileptic encephalopathies and temporal lobe epilepsy utilizing cutting edge electrophysiological recording techniques.  We are focused on deciphering how seizures emerge and propagate throughout the brain and how these events relate to other behavioural phenotypes. We use multi-site chronic in vivo electrophysiology in combination with automated sleep and seizure classifying software to identify the neuronal circuits responsible for seizure generation and propagation throughout the brain. 

 

Through this approach we can then focus on seizure causality by modulating the activity of specific brain regions thought to be critical for seizure initiation or spread through pharmacological, genetic or optogenetic approaches. Additionally, we are in the search of clinically-translatable biomarkers of neurodevelopmental disorders and epilepsy.

 

These approaches allow us to continue to develop circuit-based interventions, such as deep brain stimulation or genetic rescue, to ameliorate and reverse epilepsy-related pathologies.