About his postdoctoral project

Brain malformations characterized by brain structure abnormalities and faulty circuit wiring are the most frequent causes of epilepsy in children. Epilepsy and seizures are known to result from abnormal circuit activity; however, circuit-level changes that progressively “render epileptic” a developing brain with malformations remain poorly understood. Several factors limit the longitudinal exploration of circuit changes occurring during the pre-epileptic period: the invasiveness and bulkiness of “gold standard” instrumentation (i.e. depth electrodes), and the continuous developmental growth of brain structures and skull. To overcome these limitations we propose to combine two minimally invasive, yet very sensitive brain imaging modalities: 1) intrinsic optical signal imaging for localizing circuit activity changes, and 2) photoacoustic imaging for localizing structural abnormalities. Our ambition is to identify and localize early signs of circuit dysfunction that may serve as biomarkers or predictors of epilepsy outcomes.