Seminars

Thursday, November 30th, 3:30-5:00pm

LOCATION: BME Seminar Room

BIO: Melanie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging at the University of California San Francisco. Her lab’s research is focused on the clinical translation and integration of advanced MRI techniques to improve neurosurgical interventions and neuromodulation therapies for neurologic and neuropsychiatric conditions. In addition to research, as a first-generation academic, Melanie is very passionate about mentorship, outreach, and providing equal opportunities for underrepresented trainees.

ABSTRACT: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an effective second-line therapy for symptom management in movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, and an emerging therapy for neuropsychiatrist conditions. Despite benefiting many patients there is still significant variability in outcomes with some DBS indications like obsessive-compulsive disorder having response rates of 60%. Functional MRI (fMRI) has been increasingly leveraged as a research tool to better understand this variability in response to DBS, having been made possible by advances in DBS hardware enabling patients to undergo MRI with stimulation turned on. Researchers have already been successful in identifying functional biomarkers of symptom response to DBS and translating early findings into clinical use cases such as fMRI-guided DBS programming algorithms that can predict optimal stimulation settings at the patient level. As the DBS practice continues to grow rapidly, successful clinical implementation of these outputs will depend heavily on their reliability. Dr. Morrison will share some of the ongoing work in this area at the University of California, San Francisco, and her long-term vision for developing multiparametric decision-support tools that can be integrated at various timepoints along the DBS practice.