Candidate: Dr. Stacey has the clinical and research expertise necessary to embark on his career goal as a tenure-track physician-scientist. He is Board-certified in Neurology and has completed an epilepsy fellowship. He has been engaged in multiple productive research endeavors in Bioengineering for over 15 years, earning a PhD with Dominique Durand, a pioneer in neural engineering. He has obtained competitive research grants and awards throughout his career, has several publications, and is demonstrating current productivity. His experience uniquely qualifies him to engage in the current research proposal and career plan, merging clinical knowledge of epilepsy and electroencephalography with a strong neurophysiologic and computational background. Environment: The University of Pennsylvania is a rich environment for both research and clinical endeavors, and the Department of Neurology is home to several successful K08 and K23 applicants. The lab and clinical space necessary to perform the proposed work are all within a single city block. Dr. Stacey has established strong collaborative ties to several researchers at Penn that will enable this work to succeed. A key aspect of this proposal is that Dr. Stacey already has a faculty position as an Instructor and has established a schedule with 80% protected research time for over 2 years now. This protected time will continue, following the schedule already established in the past year as Instructor and before that as a fellow. Both the Department of Neurology and Department of Bioengineering have given enthusiastic support for Dr. Stacey's career development. Dr. Stacey already has lab space in Dr. Litt's lab and is using the computing power and experimental data described in this proposal, resources which have produced publication in 2009, a second under revision at present, and additional work that has resulted in speaking invitations to international meetings. Dr. Litt has fully committed to provide the ongoing infrastructure and mentoring necessary to propel forward Dr. Stacey's research and his career as a physician-scientist. Research: A large number of people with epilepsy continue to have uncontrolled seizures despite the best available therapies. Currently available antiepileptic devices use electrical brain stimulation to arrest seizures. Although some moderate success using these therapies has been demonstrated, a better understanding of seizure generation and the role of electrical stimulation will lead to more effective second-generation devices. Recent evidence suggests that fast ripples (and other high-frequency oscillations) localize to epileptic networks and share the same pathology as epileptic tissue. I hypothesize that fast ripples, and the pathologic tissue that produces them, are integral to seizure generation and will thereby provide an ideal target for the rational development of new brain stimulation protocols. This project will use biophysically accurate computer simulations of fast ripples, iteratively based on human recordings, to design and test new stimulation protocols to control seizures. Focusing on a specific, highly localizable network phenomenon will allow for validation of the simulated results and comparison with clinically measurable parameters, critical aspects of computational modeling that have been difficult using more general simulation approaches in epilepsy research.
The Specific Aims of this proposal describe a method to design and validate models of fast ripples, then use them to test different forms of stimulation.
Aim 1 : To develop and use a computer model of the hippocampus to determine which pathological changes in epileptic tissue: interneuronal loss, gap junctions, recurrent axons, ephaptic effects and synaptic inputs, are responsible for generating Fast Ripples.
Aim 2 : To validate findings of the computer predictions in Aim 1 using data from human microelectrode recordings and animal models.
Aim 3 : To determine which electrical stimulus paradigms are most effective in disrupting Fast Ripples in the computer model, and how the network output will change with those stimuli. Later work, beyond the scope of this proposal, will take stimuli that are successful in the computer model and deploy them in rat models of epilepsy and eventually in human stimulation trials. The likely results of these studies will be more effective second-generation antiepileptic devices that direct targeted closed-loop stimulation to discrete regions vital to seizure generation.

Public Health Relevance

Epilepsy is a very common disease, and 25% of affected people continue to have seizures despite best available therapies. Brain stimulation devices show great potential in controlling seizures, but early results have been somewhat limited. The goal of this proposal is to develop and test new stimulation methods that can improve the efficacy of antiseizure devices, providing new treatment options for people with uncontrolled epilepsy.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
Type
Clinical Investigator Award (CIA) (K08)
Project #
5K08NS069783-05
Application #
8852198
Study Section
NST-2 Subcommittee (NST)
Program Officer
Stewart, Randall R
Project Start
2011-07-01
Project End
2016-06-30
Budget Start
2015-07-01
Budget End
2016-06-30
Support Year
5
Fiscal Year
2015
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Department
Neurology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
073133571
City
Ann Arbor
State
MI
Country
United States
Zip Code
48109
Gliske, Stephen V; Irwin, Zachary T; Chestek, Cynthia et al. (2018) Variability in the location of high frequency oscillations during prolonged intracranial EEG recordings. Nat Commun 9:2155
Schroeder, Karen E; Irwin, Zachary T; Bullard, Autumn J et al. (2017) Robust tactile sensory responses in finger area of primate motor cortex relevant to prosthetic control. J Neural Eng 14:046016
Moyer, Jason T; Gnatkovsky, Vadym; Ono, Tomonori et al. (2017) Standards for data acquisition and software-based analysis of in vivo electroencephalography recordings from animals. A TASK1-WG5 report of the AES/ILAE Translational Task Force of the ILAE. Epilepsia 58 Suppl 4:53-67
Luna-Munguia, Hiram; Starski, Phillip; Chen, Wu et al. (2017) Control of in vivo ictogenesis via endogenous synaptic pathways. Sci Rep 7:1311
Gliske, Stephen V; Stacey, William C; Lim, Eugene et al. (2017) Emergence of Narrowband High Frequency Oscillations from Asynchronous, Uncoupled Neural Firing. Int J Neural Syst 27:1650049
Davis, Kathryn A; Devries, Seth P; Krieger, Abba et al. (2017) The effect of increased intracranial EEG sampling rates in clinical practice. Clin Neurophysiol 129:360-367
Gliske, Stephen V; Irwin, Zachary T; Davis, Kathryn A et al. (2016) Universal automated high frequency oscillation detector for real-time, long term EEG. Clin Neurophysiol 127:1057-1066
Gliske, Stephen V; Irwin, Zachary T; Chestek, Cynthia et al. (2016) Effect of sampling rate and filter settings on High Frequency Oscillation detections. Clin Neurophysiol 127:3042-3050
Gliske, Stephen V; Stacey, William C; Moon, Kevin R et al. (2016) THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF HFO FEATURES AS A BIOMARKER OF EPILEPTIC ACTIVITY. Proc IEEE Int Conf Acoust Speech Signal Process 2016:6290-6294
Spinelli, Elena; Davis, Ryan P; Ren, Xiaodan et al. (2016) Thrombolytic-Enhanced Extracorporeal Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation After Prolonged Cardiac Arrest. Crit Care Med 44:e58-69

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