Jeff Waugh, MD, PhD

“The most important thing that this technique would allow people to do is simply to think in a much more 

Although there are camps within the field that hold doubts about the abilities of imaging techniques, Jeff Waugh, MD, PhD, is not in those camps.

The director of the Pediatric Movement Disorders Program at UT Southwestern has helped develop a magnetic resonance imaging technique for identifying the striosome and martix compartments in vivo in the human striatum. While preliminary, Waugh feels that the method holds great potential for increasing the field’s understanding of the brain’s anatomy. 

At the American Neurological Association’s (ANA) 143rd Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, Waugh spoke with 

 about the ongoing mistrust surrounding imaging’s role in the treatment of neurological diseases. Among these conditions, such as Huntington disease (HD), the technique would allow for a much closer look at the damage done to specific kinds of neurons in the brain.

In theory, the method could also allow for a better anatomical understanding, which in turn could lead to better targeting for the available treatment modalities, such as deep brain stimulation.

Waugh J, Makis N, Sharma N, Breiter H, Blood A. An MRI method for identifying s

 and matrix compartments in the human striatum in vivo. Neurology. 2016;86(16 Suppl)

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Despite some mistrusting the abilities of imaging to aid in therapeutic development, a new MRI method could better inform the anatomical understanding of the striatum.

Jeff Waugh, MD, PhD: Viewing Striatal Injury More Granularly

“We don’t just want to be treating symptoms, we want to be treating causes. This gets us much closer to the cause of some of these diseases, instead of just treating at the end.”

It is known that there are several diseases affecting humans which are caused by damage done to the striatum. While certain conditions cause damage to 1 of the 2 parts of this area of the brain, others cause damage to the second. What’s important is understanding the role these injuries play in disease.

Despite these 2 distinct portions of the striatum operating very differently, to this point, they have been almost indistinguishable from one another using most imaging techniques. In order to address this inability to better monitor this area of the brain, a group of researchers from UT Southwestern has developed an imaging method that allows clinicians to explore how each of these parts operates independently.

At the American Neurological Association’s 143rd Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, Jeff Waugh, MD, PhD, the director of the Pediatric Movement Disorders Program at UT Southwestern, sat with 

 to discuss how this imaging method can better aid the development of therapeutics for movement disorders, as well as how it could potentially help better understand the causes of some of these neurological conditions.

The director of the Pediatric Movement Disorders Program at UT Southwestern spoke about the ability of advanced imaging to help better understand the causes of disease.

Author | Jeff Waugh, MD, PhD

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Jeff Waugh, MD, PhD: Viewing Striatal Injury More Granularly

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