Dr. Worrell recalls the first grant he received from CURE Epilepsy and credits it with having an impact on his contributions to epilepsy research.

[link removed]

CURE Epilepsy’s Impact:
Investing in Early-Stage Investigators Advances Careers & Leads to Groundbreaking Epilepsy Treatments

Key Points:
* Gregory Worrell, MD, PhD (Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN) recalls that the first grant that he received was from CURE Epilepsy and credits it with having a tremendous impact on both his career path and his groundbreaking contributions to epilepsy research.
* According to Dr. Worrell, the initial one-year grant, awarded almost 20 years ago, was a catalyst for his research to improve devices for monitoring brain activity and forecasting seizures.
* The CURE Epilepsy grant, along with an NIH career developmental award, and subsequently additional ongoing NIH and foundation grants, has firmly established Dr. Worrell as an important investigator in the fields of brain neurophysiology, seizure detection, seizure forecasting, and neural modulation.

Deep Dive:

Dr. Gregory Worrell’s path towards ultimately engaging in epilepsy research did not follow a direct road. He first trained and worked as a PhD-level physicist before entering medical school and then completed a neurology residency followed by an epilepsy fellowship. It took several additional years to reach his current role as a physician-scientist caring for epilepsy patients while simultaneously maintaining a productive research laboratory. Nevertheless, Dr. Worrell’s unique training in engineering and physics, along with the computational analyses, gave him the expertise required to understand and develop devices to monitor and modulate electrical activity of the brain.

[link removed]. Worrell credits his mentors, including Dr. Gregory Cascino, also at the Mayo Clinic, and Drs. Marc Dichter (a former advisor to CURE Epilepsy) and Brian Litt (a former CURE Epilepsy grantee), both at the University of Pennsylvania, with influencing his career direction. They provided the model, encouragement, and opportunity for a career as a clinician-scientist. Dr. Worrell’s first research grant was from CURE Epilepsy ([link removed]) , and he attributes this critical funding for getting him started in epilepsy research. Even though he was also awarded an NIH training award, he feels that, in many ways, the CURE Epilepsy grant was more important because it introduced him to the community of
epilepsy researchers.

Dr. Worrell’s grant from CURE Epilepsy focused on high-frequency oscillations (HFO), brain waves with a frequency of greater than approximately 80 Hz that are often associated with seizure activity in specific regions of the brain [1]. This electrical activity can be detected on an electroencephalogram (EEG), but at the time (approximately 20 years ago), HFOs were rarely observed simply because the range of a typical EEG was limited to no greater than 70 Hz, biased by then-accepted practice [2]. Basic research with animal models, however, had suggested that an epileptic brain exhibits a much wider dynamic range of activity, sometimes out to frequencies greater than 1,000 Hz, and so Dr. Worrell focused his early efforts on broadening the spatial and temporal sampling of brain waves [2-4]. These so-called “wide-band width” recordings have now become standard in the field.
Continue Reading ([link removed])
Your support makes this research possible. ([link removed]) Our researchers’ important work continues through the current public health crisis and beyond thanks to generous donors who, like us, envision a world without epilepsy.
[link removed]
Our mission is to find a cure for epilepsy, by promoting and funding patient-focused research. CURE Epilepsy is a non-profit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Our tax identification number is 36-4253176.
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]-
[link removed]
[link removed]

============================================================
Copyright © 2022 CURE Epilepsy, All rights reserved.
In the past you provided CURE Epilepsy your email address. Occasionally, you will receive updates from us about epilepsy research and news.

Our mailing address is:
CURE Epilepsy
420 Wabash Ave, Ste 650
Chicago, IL 60611
USA
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
.

This email was sent to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
why did I get this? ([link removed]) unsubscribe from this list ([link removed]) update subscription preferences ([link removed])
CURE Epilepsy . 420 Wabash Ave, Ste 650 . Chicago, IL 60611 . USA