An emerging hypothesis in the field of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is that neuronal hyperexcitability and other forms of aberrant network activity play an important role in shaping the clinical course of AD. In this talk, Dr. Lam will highlight the close and bi-directional relationships between epilepsy and AD, noting recent advances in our understanding of this topic spanning from animal models to humans. She will describe recent intracranial electrode recordings in humans that have revealed silent hippocampal epileptiform activity occurring in early stages of AD. Finally, she will discuss machine learning approaches that her laboratory has been developing to non-invasively diagnose and quantify silent hippocampal epileptiform activity from scalp EEG recordings.

Lysosomal storage diseases are a group of over 70 inherited metabolic disorders, many of which have a neurodegenerative clinical course. Treatments have been developed for a subset of these disorders and are now in routine clinical use. We have found that some neurological and neurodegenerative diseases share unanticipated links to lysosomal storage diseases providing insights into disease pathogenesis. These links also suggest treatments developed for lysosomal disorders may have unanticipated utility in other rare and common diseases.

Although substance use disorders (SUDs) occur commonly in patients with schizophrenia and significantly worsen their clinical course, the neurobiological basis of SUDs in schizophrenia is not well understood. Therefore, there is a critical need to understand the mechanisms underlying SUDs in schizophrenia in order to identify potential targets for therapeutic intervention. Since drug use usually begins in adolescence, it is also important to understand the long-term effects of adolescent drug exposure on schizophrenia- and reward- related behaviors and circuitry. This talk will combine pharmacological, behavioral, electrophysiologic (local field potential recordings) and pre-clinical magnetic resonance imaging (resting-state functional connectivity and magnetic resonance spectroscopy) approaches to study these topics with an eye toward developing better treatment approaches.