Modulating basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuits in Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and OCD

On behalf of the 'Rhythms of the Mind - From Theory to Bench and Bedside' Group, Dr. Mark Richardson will give a talk titled "Modulating basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuits in Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and OCD" as part of the ongoing Student/Postdoc-Run Speaker Series (SPRSS).

Abstract: The Brain Modulation Lab studies brain electrophysiology and behavior in patients undergoing surgery for epilepsy, movement disorders, and psychiatric disease. I will give an overview of major projects within our group that involve recording and stimulating in the human brain and describe how these efforts across different modalities and disease states inform our ideas about next generation neuromodulation devices. By combining electrocorticography with simultaneous subthalamic local field potential and single unit recordings when patients are speaking during DBS surgery, we found evidence for hyperdirect connectivity of auditory cortex to the subthalamic nucleus (STN), and subsequently cross-region neural dynamics that support planning and auditory-sensorimotor integration during speech production. Through studying LFP amplitudes recorded during sensing-enabled DBS for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), we are characterizing a potential LFP biomarker of OCD symptom severity that could work as a control signal in adaptive DBS. Through studying intracranial EEG segments recorded during responsive neurostimulation (RNS) for epilepsy, we discovered spectral features of seizures that are modulated in patients who respond to therapy and may represent predictive or response biomarkers. Separately, we initiated the use of thalamic RNS to treat generalized epilepsies and subsequently evolved our stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG) strategy to include recording from multiple thalamic nuclei to characterize individual seizure networks. A common theme across these studies is the need to understand discrete brain networks for potential stimulation at the mesoscale level.

For information on other talks organized by the 'Rhythms of the Mind - From Theory to Bench and Bedside' Student/Postdoc-Run Group, view the program overview here.