Artificial Intelligence > The Pioneer

The Pioneer

By Alison Caldwell, Ph.D. Photography by Paul Flessland

To Gregory Worrell, M.D., Ph.D., William L. McKnight-3M Professor of Neuroscience, BIONIC doesn’t feel futuristic, but rather like the next logical innovation in neurological care — work Mayo Clinic has pioneered for years.

“We’ve already invested over a decade into building the scientific, technical, clinical and ethical foundation of this program,” he says. “BIONIC is our opportunity to harness emerging device and digital technologies to scale this work globally and make major advancements rather than incremental progress.”

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Dr. Worrell — who is also a recipient of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Established-Investigator Career Development Award in Translation Research — is a pioneer in neurostimulation. His research focuses on understanding how seizures develop and how epilepsy affects memory, mood and sleep.

Through his work, Dr. Worrell and his team have created a “next-generation” implantable brain-sensing and stimulation system. This technology leverages artificial intelligence to learn from ongoing brain activity and personalize a patient’s therapy over time, advancing toward truly autonomous adaptive neuromodulation. Currently, he is leading clinical trials to evaluate this technology in patients with medically intractable focal and generalized epilepsy.

“Every person’s epilepsy is different,” says Dr. Worrell. “Patients need personalized, precision treatment because seizures and epilepsy-related symptoms aren’t generated by the same circuit in every person. Importantly, brain activity changes with brain state — whether a person is awake, sleeping, dreaming or experiencing a seizure. Yet clinicians have traditionally stimulated the brain the same way regardless of brain state. There’s no adaptation.”

This is the real chance to personalize treatment — when we’re already there, already recording, already learning from that patient’s brain.
— Gregory Worrell, M.D., Ph.D.

Because patients already undergo extensive monitoring during invasive epilepsy evaluations, the care team can test multiple stimulation targets and parameters at the bedside. This allows clinicians to optimize therapy for each patient before they permanently implant the device.

Dr. Worrell sees this approach as a bridge, enabling learning and personalization at the bedside today, while advancing toward a future in which implanted device systems continuously learn from brain activity and adapt therapy in real time.

“We can now quantify the brain’s state in real time and test adaptive therapy in the moment,” he says. “This is the real chance to personalize treatment — when we’re already there, already recording, already learning from that patient’s brain.”