Interview with Dr. Odile Feys, 2024 Winner of the Karl Zilles Award
Author: Simon Steinkamp
Editors: Audrey Luo, Megan Sheppard, Elisa Guma
The next researcher we present in our award-winner interview series is Dr. Odile Feys, winner of the 2024 Karl Zilles Award in Integrative Neuroscience. This award was introduced at the OHBM 2022 annual meeting in Glasgow in memory of Karl Zilles, to honor his pioneering work integrating modern neuroanatomical approaches with multi-modal in-vivo neuroimaging. The award series recognizes PhD students and postdoctoral fellows who are continuing in this tradition, developing new and innovative approaches for examining neuroanatomy.
Dr. Feys received her degree in medicine from the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) in 2018. She obtained her PhD from the LN2T, the Laboratory of Translational Neuroanatomy and Neuroimaging (“Laboratoire de Neuroanatomie et Neuroimagerie translationnelles”), part of the ULB Neuroscience Institute at the Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) in 2024. Her dissertation focused on methods for delineating the epileptogenic zone.
Dr. Feys translational research focuses on using new technological advances in magnetoencephalography (MEG) for the diagnosis and localization of refractory epilepsy. While MEG has advantages over electroencephalography (EEG), especially in the localization of brain activity, it comes with some important drawbacks such as high costs and the constraints of a stationary and static sensor helmet. The latter makes the research into epilepsy especially challenging, as patients have to sit still for long times and the distance to the sensors changes with head size. On-scalp MEG based on optically pumped magnetometers (OPM-MEG), is a new, exciting development in the field, where MEG sensors are worn via a cap, thus allowing participants and patients to move more freely. Dr. Feys aims to validate this method for clinical use in the treatment of epilepsy (e.g., for pre-surgical localization), comparing OPM-MEG against classical EEG or intracranial EEG assessment and evaluating its use for special populations, such as children.
We are thankful to Dr. Feys for answering a few questions about her work and sharing her thoughts and insights!
1. Can you share some insights into your research journey? How did your passion for neuroscience develop?
I think that I’ve been interested in how the brain works and what makes it sick since I was young. Growing up and during medical school, as I learned more and more about neurology and brain dysfunctions, my interests crystallized on epilepsy. Research in this field tackles quite fundamental neuroscience questions on the nature of epileptogenicity but it has a direct potential impact on epilepsy patients’ care, which is a fundamental aspect to me. That’s why I’ve chosen a clinical research career that focuses on epilepsy, and more specifically on refractory focal epilepsy for which a curative therapeutic approach exists: epilepsy surgery. Along the way, I developed a keen interest in the analysis of electrophysiological signals, and how they can help us identify pathophysiological processes that characterize the epileptogenic zone – again a key target for surgery.
2. What do you see as the biggest challenges in translating innovative brain imaging techniques into clinical practice?
My PhD thesis involved leveraging state-of-the-art research tools for clinical purposes, in particular on-scalp magnetoencephalography (MEG) based on optically pumped magnetometers. At the start of my thesis, my lab was just starting to implement this technique and the system was still… well, experimental. There were lots of technical issues to be overcome before getting good recordings in epileptic patients and lots of ups and downs and hiccups. Of course, solving the many, many engineering problems that came up is not something that I could do alone, and I benefited from the appropriate help. So I guess that’s one major challenge with innovative brain imaging technologies: they are experimental in nature, they require a multidisciplinary team, and the road can be frustrating at times. But this is also hugely worth the efforts, and one can only hope that we will eventually get to the point where on-scalp MEG gets used in day-to-day clinical practice in the management of epilepsy. Once the technology is mature enough – and I think we’re getting there – what we now need is more and more centers acquiring this technology and establishing sufficiently large cohorts to convince the whole medical world of its added value. As a medical doctor, I definitely hope to see on-scalp MEG applied widely for the benefit of patients with epilepsy.
3. Looking ahead, what are you most excited about exploring next?
After having spent much time on extracranial recordings with MEG, I would like to further explore the mechanisms of epileptogenesis and ictogenesis at the level of the intracranial signals. Although I have used intracranial stereo-encephalography during my PhD thesis, sometimes to validate my MEG data, sometimes to characterize the epileptogenic zone, I am now looking forward to looking at epileptic activity at more precise scales. I hope to eventually better understand the pathophysiology of epilepsy in general, and perhaps discover new aspects of certain types of epilepsy in particular––as always, with patients’ care in mind.