# The Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy Connectome Project

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON · 2022 · $563,832

## Abstract

Abstract:
Of an estimated 2.5 million people with epilepsy in the United States, close to 250,000 (~10%) have Juvenile
Myoclonic Epilepsy (JME). The majority of patients with JME experience seizure onset during a neuro-
developmentally vulnerable period and are at risk for long term cognitive and psychiatric comorbidities which
carry significant associated socioeconomic and health-care utilization costs. Medications can yield lasting
seizure control in some JME patients and mitigate the progressive neurodevelopmental consequences of
chronically uncontrolled seizures, but for many JME patients medications do not adequately control seizures.
Accurate early prediction of which patients will respond favorably to medications is crucial for optimizing
selection of treatment options, but current methods for predicting the clinical course and response to treatment
of JME remain inadequate. There exist no reliable biomarkers that predict the likelihood of drug resistance,
disease progression, or the presence, nature and severity of cognitive or psychiatric consequences of JME, all
of which vary widely between patients. Powerful imaging tools are now available for quantitatively
characterizing structural and functional connections between brain regions that make up epileptic networks,
providing a promising new approach for understanding, predicting, and treating refractory epilepsy. The
Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy Connectome Project (JMECP) will collect detailed structural and connectivity
measurements in 160 children and adolescents of age range 12-20 yrs (80 JME, 80 healthy controls) including
DTI to evaluate structural connections and fMRI to evaluate dynamic network interactions and structural MRI to
evaluate patterns of cortical and subcortical volume loss. The methods will closely mirror those currently used
by the Human Connectome Project (HCP) to study network connectivity in healthy participants. These
comparisons, based on large cohorts studied with sensitive, state-of-the-art methods, will investigate the full
extent of abnormal network structure and function in JME. The data will be used to test several important
hypotheses: 1) that recurring seizures lead to progressive connectivity abnormalities in JME, 2) that these
connectivity abnormalities are linked to the cognitive and psychosocial dysfunction, 3) that severity of
connectivity abnormalities predicts the risk of prospective decline in cognitive, psychosocial function, and in
developing medically refractory seizures, 4) that connectivity abnormalities unique to participants with JME are
associated with disease-related variables such as epilepsy duration, seizure type providing important novel
biomarkers. Evidence supporting these hypotheses will lead directly to novel clinical tools for diagnosis &
personalized management of JME patients based on quantitative imaging of connectome.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10335286
- **Project number:** 5R01NS111022-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
- **Principal Investigator:** Aaron F Struck
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $563,832
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-03-15 → 2025-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10335286

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10335286, The Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy Connectome Project (5R01NS111022-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10335286. Licensed CC0.

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