Milena Korostenskaja, PhD

Milena Korostenskaja, PhD, Neuroscientist, Head of the Functional Brain Mapping and Brain Computer Interface (FBMBCI) Laboratory at AdventHealth for Children, Orlando, FL, USA. Dr. Korostenskaja received her PhD working with magnetoencephalography (MEG) at BioMag Laboratory, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland and completed her post-doctoral training with MEG and electrocorticography (ECoG) techniques at the Department of Neurology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Ohio, USA. Founded in August 2011, the main goal of the current Dr. Korostenskaja’s FBM-BCI Laboratory at Florida Hospital is to assist the comprehensive epilepsy surgery program and improve outcomes of epilepsy surgery. The essential part of this program is localization of eloquent cortex (responsible for motor, sensory, language, and memory function) that must be maximally preserved while removing pathological epileptogenic substrate from the patients’ brain. Dr. Korostenskaja’s extensive training and expertise in utilizing ECoG and MEG techniques allowed her to implement innovative real-time ECoG-based functional mapping (real-time functional mapping – RTFM) for pre-surgical evaluation of epilepsy surgery patients. At the moment, Dr. Korostenskaja, with her colleagues and collaborators work on validation of RTFM against other functional mapping modalities, such as electrical cortical stimulation mapping (ESM), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and MEG. The results of this research are highly promising and support clinical application of RTFM methodology for pre-surgical eloquent cortex localization. Moreover, Dr. Korostenskaja’s lead studies have demonstrated significant contribution of RTFM in decreasing post-surgical language morbidity.