Events on June 1, 2022
Kara Johnson, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Florida Presents:
Deep Brain Stimulation: Imaging, Modeling, and Physiology to Guide Treatment
June 1, 2022 at 10:00am for 1hr
In person: WEB 3780, Evans Conference Room - click here for Zoom link or use Meeting ID 966 8445 7169 Passcode 800786
Dr. Kara Johnson is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Florida in the Department of Neurology and the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases. She earned her B.S. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on using computational approaches and invasive neurophysiology to study deep brain stimulation (DBS) for neurological and psychiatric disorders. As an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the SCI Institute, her doctoral research identified predictors of therapeutic response to DBS for Tourette syndrome using neuroimaging and computational models in multicenter studies. Most recently, Dr. Johnson’s postdoctoral research focuses on understanding the neurophysiological effects of DBS in movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. In her free time, she enjoys all outdoor activities (mountain biking, skiing, etc.).Abstract:
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an established therapy for movement disorders and shows promise for select neuropsychiatric disorders. Clinical outcomes of DBS rely on delivering stimulation to precise brain areas to modulate pathological neural activity to improve symptoms. However, for many DBS indications, how to target stimulation to best improve symptoms and the underlying mechanisms of DBS are unclear. In this presentation, I will discuss computational approaches used to study the potential mechanisms of DBS and determine how to optimally target stimulation to improve symptoms. In the first part of the talk, I will present our research on DBS for Tourette syndrome, a highly complex and debilitating disorder. We combined neuroimaging and computational models of DBS to identify specific brain networks and fiber pathways that predicted improvement in tics and obsessive-compulsive behaviors. In the second part, I will present our work on identifying physiological markers to guide DBS for Parkinson’s disease, particularly evoked resonant neural activity (ERNA) during pallidal DBS. I will show how ERNA follows a spatial topography in the pallidum and may be used to determine effective stimulation parameters for chronic therapy.
Posted by: Deb Zemek