Research Assistant
Cleveland Clinic
Cleveland, Ohio, United States
My name is Carmen Toth, and I am a second-year medical student at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine with eight years of research experience in the field of neuromodulation. In undergraduate, I studied biomedical engineering (also at Case Western) and worked in a lab studying the biocompatibility of intracortical microelectrodes for brain-computer interfacing, and with my current group studying deep brain stimulation (DBS) in Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, and ischemic stroke rehabilitation.
As a part of our research group, I have studied the electrophysiology of central sensorimotor pathways, focusing both on functional connectivity and motor/somatosensory evoked potentials as they relate to the function and pathophysiologic changes associated with basal ganglia thalamocortical (BGTC) and dentatothalamocortical (DTC) pathways. These two pathways are of high importance in understanding the therapeutic mechanism of action of DBS in Parkinson's disease (BGTC) and ischemic stroke (DTC), where DBS is employed to stimulate the subthalamic nucleus or cerebellar dentate nucleus, respectively. I have helped with data collection, performed extensive data analysis in MATLAB and Python, and have interpreted results and written several manuscripts. Through this work, we try to both better explain how DBS works and how the application of DBS can be improved/optimized.
Friday, January 31, 2025
10:50 AM - 11:00 AM EST