Epilepsy researcher Christin Godale credits a child neurologist for spotting her curiosity about the the human brain and her medical condition.
At the end of 2021, I was recommended to apply for a director level position, specializing in life aciences at CincyTech, and CincyTech is one of the most active seed funds in the Midwest here in America. And we thought maybe, if we can prevent this type of mTOR hyperactivation in different cell populations, then maybe that will lead to some kind of disease modification, and stop the development of the epilepsy. So I want to specifically talk about the mental health aspect of epilepsy. It helps break down this barrier and allows you to communicate what it’s like and eventually, for the next generation, maybe their experience with epilepsy won’t be as difficult, they won’t have to go through these social stigmas and be afraid to disclose they have epilepsy to their friends. So this affects a lot of people, and is often sometimes considered a refractory epilepsy. Early in life I was diagnosed with epilepsy and that inspired me to devote my professional life to studying the brain. I was in this coma for a couple of days. The physicians had to put me into this coma-like state to kind of calm down my brain activity, and possibly rescue me from the status epilepticus event. It was one of the most difficult seizure events I’ve experienced thus far in life. What are you doing to improve, you know, my treatment?” Or “What does this part of the brain do?” I was experiencing about 30 seizures a day at one point in my life. So I do have those at times, and again, that made things a bit more difficult for me growing up.