Dr. Shuman and his team aim to understand the specific activity patterns of cells in the brain that produce seizures and cognitive deficits in epilepsy. Their recent work has shown that in epileptic mice, cells that provide neuronal inhibition are active at the wrong times. With this project, Dr. Shuman will use state-of-the-art technology to make these inhibitory cells fire at the correct times and see if this can reduce seizures and improve memory.
To determine the impact of making inhibitory cells fire at the correct time on seizures, Dr. Shuman and his team will build a real-time recording and manipulation system that records brain activity and activates inhibitory cells precisely at the right time (within 1/100th of a second). They expect to find that making inhibitory cells fire at the right time will successfully reduce seizures and memory problems in epileptic mice. This study has the potential to lead to new treatment options for epileptic patients based upon correcting the firing patterns of inhibitory cells in their brains.
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