Emad N. Eskandar, M.D.

CLINICAL INTERESTS: Epilepsy, Trigeminal neuralgia, Parkinson Disease, and Brain tumors

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Dr. Eskandar heads an active basic and translational research laboratory investigating cortical-striatal circuits that play central learning, motivation, drug addiction, and recovery from stroke or brain injury.  His group uses microelectrode and electrochemical recordings to evaluate the role of these circuits in both experimental animals and humans performing complex behavioral tasks.  In addition, the group uses physiologically informed deep brain stimulation to better understand the dynamics of relevant circuits.  This is a unique approach in that ideas from the laboratory can quickly be tested in the clinical arena and vice-versa.  The group is  are actively developing novel therapeutic approaches for neuropsychiatric disorders that lack effective treatments such as post-stroke aphasia and memory disorders.

The Eskandar lab has made numerous important scientific contributions.  For example, one study, published in Nature, found that a part of the brain called the Cingulate Cortex plays an important role in adapting to varying degrees of cognitive difficulty.  Another paper in Nature Neuroscience, found that delivering micro-stimulation in one part of the basal ganglia, the caudate nucleus, significantly increases the rate of learning beyond baseline rates.  These findings suggest that the caudate plays a critical role in learning, and that learning can be enhanced to promote recovery following stroke or other brain injury.

BACKGROUND

Dr. Eskandar received a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry from the University of Nebraska. He earned a medical degree at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and a master of business administration degree at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Eskandar completed neurological surgery training at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA, and a neurophysiology fellowship at Harvard Medical School, before joining the faculty at MGH/HMS.  As faculty member, he was Charles Anthony Pappas endowed chair of Neurosurgery and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, before joining Einstein – Montefiore as the David B. Keidan Professor and Chair of Neurological Surgery, where he also holds joint appointment as Professor in the department of Neuroscience and Psychiatry

Dr. Eskandar is board-certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery, and is a member of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the Congress of Neurological Surgery,  the American Academy of Neurological Surgeons, and the Society for Neuroscience. He is also a member and past President of the American Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery

1. Aronson JP, Katnani HA, Mulvaney G, Bader ER, Yang JC, Eskandar EN. Phasic stimulation in the nucleus accumbens enhances learning after traumatic brain injury. Cereb Cortex Commun. 2022 Apr 9;3(2).
2. Bick SK, Patel SR, Katnani HA, Peled N, Widge A, Cash SS, Eskandar EN. Caudate stimulation enhances learning. Brain. 2019 Oct 1;142(10):2930-2937.
3. Widge M, Grannan B, Haroush K, Moses ZB, Eskandar EN, Herrington T, Patel S, Williams ZM. Dorsolateral prefrontal neurons mediate subjective decisions and their variation in humans. Nature Neurosci. 2019 Apr 22.
4. Martinez-Rubio C, Paulk AC, McDonald EJ, Widge AS, Eskandar EN. Multimodal Encoding of Novelty, Reward, and Learning in the Primate Nucleus Basalis of Meynert. J Neurosci. 2018 Feb 21;38(8):1942-1958.
5. Lam AD, Deck G, Goldman A, Eskandar EN, Noebels J, Cole AJ. Silent hippocampal seizures and spikes identified by foramen ovale electrodes in Alzheimer's disease. Nature medicine. 2017 Jun;23(6):678-680.
6. Asaad WF, Lauro PM, Perge JA, Eskandar EN. Prefrontal Neurons Encode a Solution to the Credit-Assignment Problem. J Neurosci. 2017 Jul 19;37(29):6995-7007.
7. Herrington TM, Cheng JJ, Eskandar EN. Mechanisms of deep brain stimulation. J Neurophysiol. 2016 Jan 1;115(1):19-38.
8. Katnani HA, Patel SR, Kwon CS, Abdel-Aziz S, Gale JT, Eskandar EN. Temporally Coordinated Deep Brain Stimulation in the Dorsal and Ventral Striatum Synergistically Enhances Associative Learning. Sci Rep. 2016 Jan 4;6:18806.
9. Ishizawa Y, Ahmed OJ, Patel SR, Gale JT, Sierra-Mercado D, Brown EN, Eskandar EN. Dynamics of Propofol-Induced Loss of Consciousness Across Primate Neocortex.  J Neurosci. 2016 Jul 20;36(29):7718-26.
10. Patel SR, Sheth SA, Martinez-Rubio C, Mian MK, Asaad WF, Gerrard JL, Kwon CS, Dougherty DD, Flaherty AW, Greenberg BD, Gale JT, Williams ZM, Eskandar EN. Studying task-related activity of individual neurons in the human brain. Nature Protocols. 2013 Apr 18;8(5):949-957.
11. Sheth S, Mian M, Patel S, Asaad W, Williams Z, Dougherty D, Bush G, Eskandar E. Human Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Neurons Mediate Behavioral Adaptation.  Nature. 2012 Aug 9;488(7410):218-21.
12. Patel S, Sheth S, Mian M, Gale J, Dougherty D, Greenberg B, Eskandar E. Single neuronal responses during a financial decision-making task in the human nucleus accumbens.  J Neuroscience, 2012 May 23;32(21):7311-5. PubMed PMID:22623676.
13. Mian MK, Sheth SA, Patel SR, Spiliopoulos K, Eskandar EN, Williams ZM. Encoding of Rules by Neurons in the Human Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex. Cereb Cortex. 2012 Nov 21. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 23172774.
14. Sheth SA, Abuelem T, Gale JT, Eskandar EN. Basal ganglia neurons dynamically facilitate exploration during associative learning. J Neurosci. 2011. Mar 30;31(13):4878-85.
15. Asaad W, Eskandar, E. Encoding of both Positive and Negative Reward Prediction Errors by Neurons of the Primate Lateral Prefrontal Cortex and Caudate Nucleus. J. Neurosci. 2011 Dec 7;31(49):17772-87.
16. Truccolo W, Donoghue JA, Hochberg LR, Eskandar EN, Madsen JR, Anderson WS, Brown EN, Halgren E, Cash SS. Single-neuron dynamics in human focal epilepsy. Nat Neurosci. 2011 May;14(5):635-41.
17. Kramer MA, Eden UT, Kolaczyk ED, Zepeda R, Eskandar EN, Cash SS. Coalescence and fragmentation of cortical networks during focal seizures. J Neurosci. 2010 Jul 28;30(30):10076-85.
18. Williams ZM, Eskandar EN. Selective enhancement of associative learning by microstimulation of the anterior caudate. Nature Neurosci. 2006. 9(4):562-8.