Noorizadeh receives junior investigator award from American Epilepsy Society

Le Bonheur Neuroscientist Negar Noorizadeh, PhD, recently received a junior investigator award from the American Epilepsy Society (AES) for her project “Improving the Accuracy of TMS Language Localization Using Tractography.” Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is utilized as a non-invasive method of mapping language cortices prior to surgical resection for epilepsy or brain tumors but suffers from high false-positive rates. This project aims to improve the accuracy of TMS by integrating it with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) tractography, an MRI technique, to create a more reliable, individualized tool for presurgical planning.

Noorizadeh hypothesizes that areas showing both TMS activation and tractography-defined connections are true language sites, while non-aligned regions may be false positives. Research will validate this tractography- optimized TMS approach against cortical stimulation mapping and postsurgical language outcomes.