Dr Ana Carolina Coan will deliver the John Stobo Prichard Award Lecture on "The impact of epilepsies on brain development and function" at the ICNC2022.

Dr. Ana Carolina Coan is Associated Professor of Child Neurology of the Department of Neurology of the Campinas University – UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil. Since 2000, she developed her research at the Neuroimaging Laboratory at UNICAMP focusing at the use of structural and functional MRI for the identification of biomarkers associated epilepsies phenotypes. Her studies described the network of cerebral gray and white matter abnormalities in distinct phenotypes of epilepsies. Prospective studies showed that the diffuse brain damage can be progressive according to the underlying etiology and that this progression occurs in pharmacoresistant cases as well as in those with prolonged time of seizure freedom. With the use of functional MRI, she showed that interictal related functional networks do not overlap with the cerebral gray matter structural damage. Dr. Coan also studied the use of multimodal neuroimaging to improve the noninvasive pre-surgical evaluation of individuals with pharmacoresistant epilepsies and how they can accelerate and diminish the costs of this evaluation. Her current research focuses on the association of clinical phenotypes and brain structural and functional abnormalities of different epileptic syndromes and their impact on brain development. Dr. Coan is an associated researcher of the Brazilian Institute of Neuroscience and Neurotechnlogy - BRAINN. She is currently the treasurer of the Brazilian Society of Child Neurology (SBNI) and the representative of child neurology of the Education Commission of the Brazilian Academy of Neurology (ABN). She is also member of the Executive Board of the International Child Neurology Association (ICNA).