Ujwal Boddeti, University of Maryland Department of Neurosurgery
Alexander Ksendzovsky, University of Maryland Department of Neurosurgery
Matthias K. Gobbert, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders affecting 70 million people worldwide. Thirty percent of epilepsy patients experience refractory seizures, meaning they persist despite medical management with anti-epileptic drugs. Given this, many patients must turn to epilepsy surgery to achieve seizure freedom. However, despite surgical resection of cortical regions involved in seizure onset, 42-63% of patients go on to have seizures within 1 year of surgery. Recent studies have demonstrated that resection of nodes outside the epileptogenic focus (site of seizure onset) may contribute to better post-epilepsy surgery outcomes, suggesting the role of network formation in epilepsy. Given this, our group aims to investigate network formation in in vitro culture model of cortical epilepsy to better understand the role of network formation in epilepsy.