Portal to the Penn Neuroscience Community

Home

MINS Members

MINS News

Weekly Events

MINS Colloquium Schedule

History

Community Outreach Programs

Neuroscience Graduate Group
Other Educational Activities

Society for Neuroscience

Classified Ads

 MINS Members

Brian Litt, M.D.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

RESEARCH TECHNIQUES

RESEARCH SUMMARY

My scientific research is focused on my clinical work as a Neurologist specializing in the care and treatment of individuals with epilepsy and encompasses a number of related projects:

Seizure Prediction: developing an engineering model of how seizures are generated and spread in humans with temporal lobe epilepsy. Goals are to: (1) find the earliest precursors of seizures in continuous recordings of the intracranial electroencephalogram (EEG) through novel engineering approaches to signal analysis; (2) use this information to predict seizures before clinical onset; and (3) based upon these findings, develop an implantable brain device to predict seizures and arrest their genesis before any evidence of clinical expression.

Epileptogenesis: Using engineering methods to understand the mechanisms underlying epileptogenesis. This work identifies stages in the development of epilepsy from the time of induction of seizures in animal models, through the “latent period,” and into the development of spontaneous seizures. These changes are used to trigger analysis of changes in underlying synaptic organization, electrophysiology and gene expression during the chain of events that lead to spontaneous epilepsy.

Localization of Seizures in Extratemporal Epilepsy: Developing methods to localize and treat seizures arising from regions outside of the temporal lobes. Multimodality collaboration with functional neuroimaging, cognitive science, neurosurgery and interventional neuroradiology.

Minimally Invasive Tools for Acquisition and Display of High Fidelity Electrophysiologic Recording: This work focuses on novel methods for gathering high fidelity EEG, Evoked Potential and Functional Brain Mapping?information traditionally gathered by surgical implantation of intracranial subdural, depth and epidural electrodes. Effort will be focused on methods to superimpose this information upon 3-dimensional brain images used for intra-operative localization of brain function and resection of epileptogenic tissue.

Brain Stimulation for Epilepsy: Developing paradigms for brain stimulation to treat seizures in humans and animal models of epilepsy.