Event Date
Gene Gurkoff, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Neurological Surgery
Center for Neuroscience, Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine
UC Davis
ABSTRACT
While many labs are evaluating neurodegeneration in the acute period post-traumatic brain injury and neuroprotection as a therapy, there are relatively few that are exploring treatment options for patients with chronic neurodegenerative disease or to treat the cognitive deficit specifically. Similarly, in the field of temporal lobe epilepsy, we found that most investigators are focused on understanding ictogenesis and trying to prevent seizures, with few labs focused on treating co-morbidities associated with epilepsy such as the cognitive side-effects.
My lab has developed the hypothesis that, due to a combination of mechanisms, neural connectivity is disrupted in neurologic disease. Moreover, techniques to entrain more normal connectivity will improve behavioral outcomes. Over the last 10 years we have recorded local field potentials from intracranial electrodes across multiple brain regions in rodent models of both traumatic brain injury and temporal lobe epilepsy. We have observed attenuated slow wave oscillations across the circuit that coincide with cognitive deficits in both models. Following deep brain stimulation of the medial septum, we have observed improved cognitive outcome in both models and a decrease in the propensity to seizure in rats with temporal lobe epilepsy. As we continue our research at Davis we hope to refine electrophysiology both to better understand mechanisms related to disease and dysfunction but also to identify novel biomarkers of injury as well as therapeutic options to treat patients with often times devastating neurologic disorders.
BIO
Dr. Gene Gurkoff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery at UC Davis. He received his B.S. degree from Brown University and his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCLA.
Dr. Gurkoff is interested in using neuromodulation, therapies delivered to specific targets within the central nervous system, to improve quality-of-life in patients with neurological disorders such as traumatic brain injury, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease or brain tumor. He collaborates with multiple investigators in the Center for Neuroscience as well as throughout UC Davis Health to develop and test exciting new hypotheses in the lab with the goal of translating therapies from bench to bedside.
As treatment of neurological disease is too complicated for any one investigator to solve, Dr. Gurkoff is dedicated to training the next generation of physician (residents and medical students) and research (high school, undergraduate, master's and Ph.D.) scientists who one day will play a critical role in advancing novel therapies for currently untreatable disorders.
Faculty host: Wilsaan Joiner, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior & Department of Neurology