Understanding and treating neurological disorders
Welcome to the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford!
The Department has been a center of excellence for more than four decades and includes over 140 School of Medicine faculty members with primary academic appointments in the Department at our four outstanding teaching hospitals and health care systems. The Stanford Health Care (SHC) new 824,000 square-foot state-of-the-art hospital opened in 2019 with over 600 beds, making it one of the largest inpatient facilities in California. Ranked in the top 10 for Neurology and Neurosurgical Care by US News and World Report, SHC is at the cutting edge of the latest treatments for neurological diseases. SHC boasts a dedicated outpatient Stanford Neuroscience Health Center—a facility like no other on the West Coast—as well as clinics located throughout Northern California. With over 60,000 annual outpatient visits and thus one of the largest neurology volumes in the U.S., Stanford Neurology provides care for a large and highly diverse patient population and supports excellence in clinical care, education, and research.
Frank M. Longo, MD, PhD
George and Lucy Becker Professor and Chair Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences
Neurology News
Stroke Risk Rising in Young People
2 million young adults suffer from strokes ever year. Maarten Lansberg, MD, PhD, professor at the Stanford Stroke Center, provides insight about risk factors.
The future of movement disorders
Helen Bronte-Stewart is a neurologist and an expert in movement disorders, like Parkinson’s. She says new approaches, such as closed-loop deep-brain stimulation, and new digital health technologies that chart subtle changes in movement are reshaping the field, leading to new understandings and new treatments for this once-untreatable disease. To modulate behavior, you first have to measure it, Bronte-Stewart tells host Russ Altman. It’s the future of movement disorders in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.
Multisite thalamic recordings to characterize seizure propagation in the human brain
In the first of its kind, a group of investigators at Stanford Healthcare mapped the pathways for seizure propagation through the brain’s switchboard (thalamus) in patients with presumed refractory temporal lobe epilepsy by recording simultaneously from multiple sites within this structure. Their findings - now published by Teresa Wu and colleagues in Brain – reveals a novel and surprising finding: In more than half of the patients, seizures do not spread the way we thought they did! They concluded that personalized targeting of the thalamus for neuromodulation in each patient may lead to better treatment outcomes in these patients.
Parkinson's Disease Biomarker Found
In an enormous leap forward in the understanding of Parkinson’s disease (PD), researchers have discovered a new tool that can reveal a key pathology of the disease: abnormal alpha-synuclein — known as the “Parkinson’s protein” — in brain and body cells. The breakthrough, announced last night as it was published in the scientific journal The Lancet Neurology, opens a new chapter for research, with the promise of a future where every person living with Parkinson’s can expect improved care and treatments — and newly diagnosed individuals may never advance to full-blown symptoms.
Epstein Barr Virus & Multiple Sclerosis
New research shows that Multiple Sclerosis may be caused by Epstein Barr virus infection. Learn more in this informative Grand Rounds lecture at the Seattle Science Foundation by Jeffrey Dunn, MD.
Scientists dance the beautiful brain
To some an unlikely pair, neuroscience and art were a natural complement during a performance hosted by Stanford's Medicine & the Muse program, which featured an evening of dance theater celebrating neuroscience.
The Documentary: The long haul of long Covid
Three years after the official declaration of a pandemic, 65 million people - one in 10 who had Covid-19 - still have symptoms. Some are so ill they are yet to return to work. Michelle Monje-Deisseroth, MD, PhD and other researchers around the world try to unravel the cause behind long COVID which is associated with around 200 symptoms including persistent cognitive impairment.
Stanford Neuroscience
Stanford Health Care provides comprehensive care and treatment for neurological disorders.