Intercranial Recording

We conduct rare studies in neurosurgical patients, in whom we can record from single brain cells. These studies are being done in collaboration with the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Iowa, Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, CA, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and the epilepsy monitoring program at the University of Bonn in Germany.

This research is done in patients who have severe epilepsy, and who are candidates for neurosurgical removal of that region of the brain causing their seizures. In some cases, this requires the implantation of electrodes into, and on top of, the brain in order to localize where the seizures originate. During this monitoring time the patients can elect to participate in our research programs.

An example of the data recorded at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, with our collaborator Dr. Ueli Rutishauser are shown in the figure below.

Figure A: Broadband intracranial EEG recordings.
Figure B: Filtered extracellular recordings from small microwires, showing action potentials from single human neurons.