[MUSIC PLAYING] I was mostly inspired to become a physician because of my father, who is a physician, and early experiences taking care of children that at the time were labeled as having emotional problems. In retrospect, I realize that they had autism. And so I volunteered at a local facility where these children actually lived and helped to teach them to swim and interact with them, and that kind of kindled my early interest in child neurology.

So I am a child neurologist, which means that I care for children who have neurologic problems or problems relating to their brain and spinal cord and nerves. My particular interest is in epilepsy, which is a condition where children are predisposed to seizures. And my specialty is, I focus on children with very-hard-to-control seizures typically. So, typically, I get second opinions for children that are having difficulty controlling their seizures, and they want to learn, is there something else that might help them to cure or markedly control their seizures.

There are several things that we do here at University of Chicago that are a little different in child neurology. One is, we focus very strongly in epilepsy, and we have the latest neurodiagnostic capabilities, meaning that we have the tools that are necessary to get to an answer. But we also have therapies that are particularly well-developed here, and that includes surgery and ketogenic diet. But in addition to that, we have several other areas of particular interest, including this broad category called phakomatoses. That's things like tuberous sclerosis and neurofibromatosis. So we, in addition to being general child neurologists, have several areas of subspecialty expertise that I think are very valuable to those patients.

In general, my philosophy of care is tied to the kinds of interactions that I have with patients. And, as I mentioned, most of the time, I'm asked to do a second opinion to weigh in on cases that tend to be more complicated than say typical. And in that setting, what I found to be particularly helpful is to listen very carefully to parents and patients. Many times, the clue as to what information is needed is embedded in that. So I try to listen very carefully, try not to interrupt. And that's the basis that-- history of the illness is the basis of most of what I do.

But the other thing that I've learned-- and my philosophy you could say-- is to look at the primary data. So it's really important, when patients come to see me, that I have their actual brainwave tracings, the actual data from that, and the actual images and the actual gene information. Then, when I put all of that together with that history, then, usually, I can make a solid contribution.

I really love caring for people. That's been the thing across my career that I keep coming back to and really enjoy. And with children, what's particularly nice is that, in caring for them, you get to see them thrive, develop, and then you get an appreciation that the work that you're doing could have a lifelong impact on someone.

I think the most important thing that we're learning from a variety of sources-- including adult neurology-- is that it's very important for people to stay active. So physical activity is very important for the health of our brains. I try to do that. I try to encourage that for all of my patients. And what we've learned from basic science work too, is, it's important to have social interactions. So for children, that means going to school, playing with other children, being outdoors, being physically active. I think that makes a big difference in brain health.

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