James Niemeyer, PhD, an instructor in neurological surgery and a researcher in Dr. Theodore Schwartz’s epilepsy laboratory, has been honored with a 2024 Young Investigator Award from the American Epilepsy Society. Dr. Niemeyer won for his project titled “Mesoscale excitatory and inhibitory mapping of node recruitment in focal neocortical epilepsy.”
The American Epilepsy Society and the Scientific Program Committee selected 20 early career researchers from a pool of more than 1,500 submissions this year for the Young Investigator Award. The award recognizes 20 young investigators conducting basic, translational, or clinical epilepsy research. Dr. Niemeyer will present his winning abstract at the AES meeting in December.
The work holds promise for patients with focal neocortical epilepsy, about 30 percent of whom do not respond to anti-seizure medication. About 50 percent of drug-resistant patients can be successfully treated with surgery, but options are needed for the other half. Dr. Niemeyer’s work is designed to help researchers better understand how seizures initiate and spread in cortical networks, in a quest to design effective treatments.
Dr. Niemeyer developed an experimental paradigm that permits simultaneous electrographic recording and mesoscale calcium imaging of Thy1-positive excitatory or parvalbumin-positive inhibitory neurons across a defined bilateral neocortical network. By applying microstimulation and inducing focal seizures to characterize this network, the team found that propagation patterns of focal to bilateral neocortical seizures are partially guided by excitatory/inhibitory balance, which can vary across the corpus callosum. The data also highlight that specific network nodes outside of the seizure onset zone may serve as targets to restrain seizure propagation. These findings will guide future and ongoing studies examining how different cell types and brain regions outside of the ictal focus can be manipulated to impede or prevent focal neocortical seizures.