HOW CAN WE HELP YOU? Call 1-800-TRY-CHOP
In This Section
Eric D. Marsh, MD, PhD
Attending Physician
Dr. Marsh's research program focuses on understanding how changes in brain development lead to epilepsy, intellectual disability, and autism. He combines molecular and physiological tools in mouse models to ask questions about the interaction of normal development with single gene mutations to determine how the brain responds to perturbations in development.
Bio
Dr. Marsh's research program aims to identify the genetic, cellular, and network mechanisms of seizures and cognitive dysfunction in children. Toward this end, he works to better understand the mechanisms that may lead to the early onset epilepsies and to develop models of known genetic etiologies. Dr. Marsh is a core faculty member of the ENGIN Frontier Program.
He leads a lab team that is studying transgenic mice with mutations in ARX, a protein that primarily controls how interneurons develop and is linked to families with an X-linked pattern of seizures, infantile spasms, and intellectual disability.
He also performs studies on other mouse models, including those with mitochondrial mutations and IQSEC2 human mutations, and have worked with CDKL5 knockout, Sfn5a knock out, and other mouse models. In these models, Dr.Marsh and his team apply various cell biological, physiological, and behavioral techniques, including voltage-sensitive dye imaging, single cell physiology, microelectrode array recordings and signal analysis to understand cellular and network changes in the developing brain that leads to epilepsy.
A second research direction by Dr. Marsh is a translational approach to determine the network and electrophysiological alterations in the brains of children with intractable, early-onset epilepsies. To do this he studies intracranial and scalp EEG from children with intractable focal epilepsies undergoing evaluation for epilepsy surgery as well as pre- and post-treatment. Dr. Marsh and his lab team have been extracting features from the EEG, primarily interictal spikes and sharps, and determining if they inform about network dynamics or can act as a biomarker for the ictal onset zone or of outcome of epilepsy surgery.
Education and Training
BS, Haverford College (Biology), 1991
MS, New York University (Physiology and Neuroscience), 1995
MD, New York University School of Medicine, 1998
PhD, New York University (Physiology and Neuroscience), 2001
Titles and Academic Titles
Attending Physician
Clinical Director, Neurogenetics Program
Associate Professor of Neurology
Professional Memberships
American Academy of Neurology, 2000-
Child Neurology Society, 2000-
American Epilepsy Society, 2003-
Society for Neuroscience, 2007-
Lennox Gastaut Syndrome Foundation, 2015-
Professional Awards
TOPs Scholar, Child Neurology Society, 2002
Abass-Alavi Postdoctoral Fellow Award in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, 2004
American Epilepsy Society/Milken Family Foundation- Early Career Investigator Award, 2005
Young Investigator Award of the MRDDC Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, 2007
Leonard Berwick Teaching Award, Perelman School of Medicine, 2014