Dr. Shennan Weiss Publishes Groundbreaking Research on Epilepsy

By Office of Communications & Marketing | May 16, 2022

Congratulations to Shennan Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Neurology and Physiology, for his groundbreaking research on epilepsy recently published in Brain Communications, an Oxford University Press Journal.

The study’s findings will help in future drug developments to prevent the onset of epilepsy following an injury, and ensure that neurologists and neurosurgeons can use the most effective surgical procedures to treat epilepsy disorders.

It is unclear if seizures are generated in a specific discrete region of the brain, or by a network of distant areas acting together in epilepsy patients.

Dr. Weiss’s research provides strong clinical and neurophysiological evidence supporting the latter network hypothesis. It is the first study to draw this conclusion.

Dr. Weiss used spatial and temporal correlations of an electrical biomarker of epileptic brain tissue called a ‘fast ripple’ to construct the epileptic networks in patients. The fast ripples examined in the study were measured from surgically placed depth electrodes in drug-resistant epilepsy patients at the University of California Los Angeles and Thomas Jefferson University as part of their pre-surgical evaluation.

Dr. Weiss used machine learning to train and test an algorithm based on fast ripple network measures to predict patients who did not benefit from epilepsy surgery. The algorithm predicted surgical failures with a 92 percent accuracy, which may help neurologists and neurosurgeons identify patients who will benefit most from epilepsy surgery and the most effective procedures.

Trained in Neurology and Epileptology at Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. Weiss is a recipient of the prestigious Founders Award from the American Academy of Neurology for his work on epilepsy research.