Email

vkrish@bcm.edu

Positions

Assistant Professor

Neurology, Neuroscience, and Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Baylor College of Medicine

Principal Investigator

Laboratory of Epilepsy and Emotional Behavior
Baylor College of Medicine

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Electrical and Computer Engineering
Rice University

Addresses

Laboratory of Epilepsy and Emotional Behavior (Lab)

6550 Fannin St Smith Tower
Neurosensory BCM NA200
Houston, TX 77030
United States

Baylor College of Medicine Medical Center (Clinic)

7200 Cambridge St
9th Floor
Houston, TX 77030
United States

Education

BS from New York University

05/2003 - NY, New York, United States

Neuroscience (Hons), Chemistry

MD-PhD from University of Texas Southwestern Med. Center Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP)

06/2010 - Dallas, Texas, United States

PhD: Behavioral Neuroscience, Molecular Neuroplasticity

Internship at Parkland Memorial Hospital/University of Texas Southwestern

06/2011 - Dallas, Texas, United States

Internal Medicine

Residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School

06/2014 - Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Adult Neurology

Postdoctoral Fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School

06/2016 - Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Seizures and autism-related behavior, mouse models of autism and epilepsy

Clinical Fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School

06/2016 - Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Clinical Neurophysiology and Epilepsy

Certifications

Adult Neurology (2014)

American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology

Clinical Neurophysiology (2017)

American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology

Epilepsy Medicine (2018)

American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology

Honors & Awards

Outstanding Resident Teaching Award

Harvard Medical School (07/2013)

NINDS R25 Award

National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (01/2014 - 06/2015)

Clinical Research Training Fellowship in Epilepsy

American Academy of Neurology, American Brain Foundation (07/2016 - 08/2018)

Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award K08

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (04/2019 - 03/2024)

Junior Faculty Seed Grant

Curtis Hankamer Basic Research Fund (07/2019 - 06/2020)

Junior Investigator Award

American Epilepsy Society (10/2020 - 09/2021)

Professional Interests

• Epilepsy and Mental Health Disorders
• Comorbid Epileptic and Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures
• Comorbid treatment-refractory depression AND epilepsy
• Behavioral Phenotyping in Mouse Models of Neuropsychiatric Illness
• Home Cage Monitoring

Professional Statement

I am proud to be a physician-scientist at the Baylor Comprehensive Epilepsy Center. I am an adult neurologist with expertise in treating epilepsy (an "epileptologist") and the interpretation of electroencephalograms (EEGs) and other neuromonitoring techniques (a "clinical neurophysiologist"). I have a special interest in caring for patients with epilepsy and comorbid mental health conditions (such as depression/anxiety, psychogenic nonepileptic seizures, schizophrenia, or autism). My laboratory uses mouse models of epilepsy to explain how certain brain "lesions" that produce hyperexcitability (or medications that treat hyperexcitability) may give rise to pervasive alterations in emotional behavior and social drive (www.bcm.edu/krishnanlab).

I received a PhD in Neuroscience as a part of a combined MDPhD program. For my PhD, I used mouse models of psychosocial stress to understand how certain molecular and cellular changes in specific brain regions underlie whether an animal may be vulnerable or resilient to the psychopathological effects of chronic stress. After my clinical training, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neurobiology, where I examined how the experience of recurrent seizures result in long lasting alterations in neuronal physiology that may give rise to changes in sociability.

My scientific goals are to understand the biology underlying the intersections between seizures, epilepsy and psychiatric symptoms/mental health disorders. I hope to build a systematic approach to treating epilepsy as a spectrum disorder, where a distributed network-based "lesion" gives rise to both "ictal" changes (brief, paroxysmal and stereotyped abnormalities of neurological function) and "interictal" changes (pervasive aberrations in mood, anxiety, activity or sociability). My goal is for this work to be translated into a comprehensive pathophysiology-based approach to treating epilepsy spectrum disorders where seizures and psychiatric/cognitive derangements are addressed with equal importance through a comprehensive team of care providers. Towards this goal, I direct the Laboratory of Epilepsy and Emotional Behavior at the Baylor College of Medicine, where we apply state of the art behavioral monitoring techniques in mice to carefully dissect how genetic vulnerabilities that result in epilepsy or elevated seizure risk impact activity, anxiety, motivation and sociability.

Websites

Selected Publications

• Krishnan V "Depression and Anxiety in the Epilepsies: from Bench to Bedside." Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep. 2020 : Pubmed PMID: 32666148
• Jankovic MJ, Kapadia PP, Krishnan V "Home-cage monitoring ascertains signatures of ictal and interictal behavior in mouse models of generalized seizures.." PLoS One. 2019 : Pubmed PMID: 31697745
• Krishnan V, Stoppel DC, Nong Y, Johnson MA, Nadler MJ, Ozkaynak E, Teng BL, Nagakura I, Mohammad F, Silva MA, Peterson S, Cruz TJ, Kasper EM, Arnaout R, Anderson MP. "Autism gene Ube3a and seizures impair sociability by repressing VTA Cbln1.." Nature. 2017 : Pubmed PMID: 28297715
• Krishnan V, Han MH, Graham DL, Berton O, Renthal W, Russo SJ, Laplant Q, Graham A, Lutter M, Lagace DC, Ghose S, Reister R, Tannous P, Green TA, Neve RL, Chakravarty S, Kumar A, Eisch AJ, Self DW, Lee FS, Tamminga CA, Cooper DC, Gershenfeld HK, Nestler EJ "Molecular adaptations underlying susceptibility and resistance to social defeat in brain reward regions.." Cell. 2007 : Pubmed PMID: 17956738

Memberships

American Academy of Neurology

American Epilepsy Society

NINDS/AES Epilepsy Benchmark Stewards Committee