Providing a New Map of the Human Brain

What biomedical issue did you address in your research, and what did your studies find?

My Ph.D. research aimed to map the motor network across regions of the human brain. Using intracranial electrodes to record electric potentials in the brain, I identified and characterized nodes within the brain's network that controls and coordinates movement.

My research used a specific type of intracranial electrode, known as stereoelectroencephalography depth electrodes, to record information throughout regions of the brain while study participants performed tasks that our lab designed.  With consent from volunteer patient-participants and help from the staff of the Epilepsy Monitoring and Pediatric Intensive Care units, I was able to collect data correlating regions of the brain to movement.

My initial discovery was that the motor homunculus, a map of the primary motor cortex that corresponds to specific parts of the body, is interrupted by subregions that are involved in movement, but are not correlated to any single movement in particular. We named this region the Rolandic Motor Association (RMA) area. This finding, published in Nature Neuroscience, provides an entirely new understanding of the organization of the primary motor cortex.

I also wanted to understand the connectivity of the RMA to the rest of the brain. I established a framework that uses the spectral and potential changes after single-pulse stimulation of the brain to more accurately interpret connectivity between brain regions. Applying this framework to the RMA, I found the connectivity of the RMA to the rest of the brain to be distinct from the surrounding tissue in the primary motor region.  This finding suggests the RMA may be a novel site for future stimulation therapies addressing epilepsy or movement disorders.

What motivates you?

I'm an M.D.-Ph.D. student in Mayo's Medical Scientist Training Program. I'm motivated by curiosity about the brain and the world in general. My interest in the brain grew from my own experience with brain injury following a bike accident, which motivated me to get involved in the brain injury support community and even start a podcast on the topic in 2016. Though not much of my Ph.D. research ties directly to brain injury rehabilitation, the work is basic enough that it could someday impact the way we treat and rehabilitate patients with brain injuries using neuromodulation.