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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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“Epilepsy – Beyond the Local Network”
Nigel P. Pedersen, M.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Neurology
Emory University
While human research has emphasized the large-scale network disruptions in the epilepsies and their co-morbidities, basic science has typically focused on local networks. In rodents, more general large-scale network dynamics are essentially unstudied at fast time scales and high spatial precision. I will describe our human work examining forebrain connectivity and animal studies that examine large scale network manipulations and the development of techniques to record from larger anatomically connected networks. Present animal model work focuses on manipulations of one of the most important large-scale networks - the major state control system for sleep-wake and vigilance. While these circuits have been elucidated in increasing detail over the last decade and are the major controller of brain rhythms and excitability, they are surprisingly little explored in epilepsy. I will discuss the limitations of present technologies for studying large-scale brain networks in rodents and a solution that we are developing.
