“Jasper’s Basic Mechanisms of the Epilepsies” Workshop

Abstract

SummaryIn 1969, H.H. Jasper, A.A. Ward, and A. Pope and the Public Health Service Advisory Committee on the Epilepsies of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published the first edition on Basic Mechanisms of the Epilepsies (BME). Since then, basic and clinical researchers in epilepsy have gathered together each decade to assess where epilepsy research has been, what it has accomplished, and where it should go. In 1999, the third edition of BME was named in honor of H.H. Jasper. Projected for publication in 2011, the fourth edition of Jasper’s BME will (1) synthesize the role of interactions between neurons, synapses, and glia in the initiation, spread, and arrest of seizures; (2) examine the molecular, cellular, and network plasticity mechanisms that subserve excitability, seizure susceptibility, and ultimately epileptogenesis; (3) provide a framework for expanding the genome of rare mendelian epilepsies and understanding the complex heredity responsible for common epilepsies; (4) explore cellular mechanisms of the two main groups of presently known Mendelian epilepsy genes, namely ion channelopathies and developmental epilepsy genes; and (5) for the first time, describe the current efforts to translate the discoveries in epilepsy disease mechanisms into molecular and cellular therapeutic strategies in order to repair and cure the epilepsies. For an expanded treatment of this topic see Jasper’s Basic Mechanisms of the Epilepsies, Fourth Edition (Noebels JL, Avoli M, Rogawski MA, Olsen RW, Delgado‐Escueta AV, eds) published by Oxford University Press (available on the National Library of Medicine Bookshelf [NCBI] at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books).