Meet Anderson
“Clinical and Therapeutic Implications of Computational Cortical Modeling”
Dr. William S. Anderson received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and subsequently performed a Neurosurgical Residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He additionally completed a Functional Neurosurgery Fellowship under Dr. Frederick Lenz, M.D., Ph.D. in the Department of Neurosurgery from 2005-2007. Dr. Anderson served as an attending neurosurgeon at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School from 2008-2010, and additionally holds a PhD in Physics from Princeton University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins.
Along with the Division of Functional Neurosurgery, Dr. Anderson offers comprehensive treatments for Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, and dystonia, including deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapies. Dr. Anderson is also a member of the Epilepsy Surgery team, and performs both resectional procedures such as temporal lobectomy, diagnostic procedures such as implantation of monitoring grids and depth electrodes, and therapeutic neuromodulation using vagal nerve and cortical stimulation. Procedures for pain and spasticity performed include intrathecal baclofen therapy and spinal cord stimulation therapy. Dr. Anderson is also the PI for research protocols exploring the use of DBS in obsessive compulsive disorder, Tourette syndrome, and schizophrenia. He serves as the center surgeon in the current North American multicenter trial studying DBS for Alzheimer disease.
The Anderson laboratory focuses on the computational modeling of epilepsy as a method to understand the time and spatial evolutionary properties of seizures. Modeling methods include large array single compartment models and multicompartment simulations for the extraction of electrophysiology. Using these modeling tools, we explore how fast seizures spread, the spatial extent of spread, the spread of interictal spikes, and the introduction of therapies such as drug diffusion and electrical stimulation. The laboratory also explores the effects on memory encoding of theta phase specific stimulation during working memory tasks. Recordings derived from deep brain stimulation procedures are also used to learn more about motor imagery and motor planning.
Seminar Abstract
“Clinical and Therapeutic Implications of Computational Cortical Modeling”
Computational modeling of central nervous system structures has been increasingly used to explore applied therapies such as electrical stimulation or drug delivery techniques to treat neurological diseases. Most prior modeling efforts have explored the effects of therapies on passive excitable networks, which may be missing the essential features of physiological changes brought about by the therapies. We describe the use of computational neocortical models demonstrating realistic network activity for the purpose of exploring network activity alterations induced by electrical stimulation. Our goal is to create a portable easily implemented model on small computational clusters written in the Genesis environment for the use of exploring various drug and electrical stimulation treatments.
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