On-Demand Restoration Of The Dentate Gate For Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

This work seeks to identify a new target for intervention to inhibit temporal lobe seizures, with the goal of effectively controlling seizures while minimizing side-effects through greater specificity of intervention. Optogenetics is a powerful technology allowing selective control of specific populations of brain cells at specific times using light. This project uses a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy to investigate whether a responsive optogenetic intervention applied only when a seizure occurs and selectively targeting only a subset of excitatory cells in the temporal lobe can control spontaneous temporal lobe seizures. It further investigates the cognitive benefits of this temporally, spatially, and cell-type selective intervention.