Posts by Ziv Williams, MD
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Single-Neuron Recordings Show How the Brain Plans Speech
Using single-neuron recordings, Massachusetts General Hospital researchers have discovered how the brain forms words before an individual speaks. Such recordings might be useful for developing synthetic speech prostheses or augmenting other approaches that benefit patients with neurological disorders.
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Interim Safety Profile From the Feasibility Study of the BrainGate Neural Interface System
Massachusetts General Hospital researchers report that BrainGate, a brain–computer interface for people with paralysis, was not associated with any serious adverse event requiring device explantation, resulting in death or resulting in permanently increased disability during the one-year post-implantation period.
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Basic Rules Identified for Therapeutic Intracranial Stimulation of the Human Brain
Massachusetts General Hospital researchers have found evidence it may be possible to establish how brain stimulation should be given—where and with what amplitude, duration and frequency—to produce specific therapeutic results for individual patients with a wide variety of neuropsychiatric disorders.
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Aura Type Is Useful When Evaluating Candidates for Anterior Temporal Lobectomy
Ziv M. Williams, MD, and colleagues found that cephalic auras, gustatory auras and visual auras among patients with temporal lobe epilepsy correlated with worse Engel class after anterior temporal lobectomy, whereas patients who reported multiple aura types had a better outcome.
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Manipulation of Gene Linked to Autism Spectrum Disorder Restores Neuronal Processing of Social Behavior in Mice
Daniel Lee, MD, and Ziv M. Williams, MD, of the Department of Neurosurgery, and colleagues have demonstrated that changes in social behavior due to disruption of the Shank3 gene in mice relate to the ability of neurons to encode information about other individuals—and recovery of Shank3 gradually increases sociability.
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Single Neurons Identified That Support Social Reasoning
In groundbreaking research, Mohsen Jamali, MD, PhD, and Ziv M. Williams, MD, of the Department of Neurosurgery, and colleagues identified single neurons that reliably encode information about other people's beliefs—with implications for treating autism and other theory of mind disordered conditions.
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Spine Surgeon Specialty Does Not Influence Short-term Outcomes of Percutaneous Kyphoplasty
Neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons have almost identical rates of postoperative complications and unplanned readmissions after single-level percutaneous kyphoplasty.
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Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Has Important Role in Subjective Decision-making
By recording the activity of individual neurons in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of patients undergoing intraoperative neurophysiology, Massachusetts General Hospital researchers have gained insight into how humans make subjective decisions during an opinion-based task.
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Advances in Epilepsy Surgery
In this video, Ziv WIlliams, MD, describes new advances in epilepsy surgery such as responsive neural stimulators, which identify seizure activity, stimulate the areas causing seizures and stop them, and thermal laser ablation, which uses pulses of laser light to remove areas that are causing seizures.
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Long-Term Visual Memory Has a Role in Suppressing Learning
By investigating visual search, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have made an important addition to the understanding of long-term memory processes.
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Advances in Treatments for Movement Disorders
Two Mass General neurosurgeons give prominent examples of the hospital’s expertise in functional neurosurgery.
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How Does the Brain Transform Thoughts into Spoken Words?
Mass General researchers used cortical stimulation and neural recording to study a specific linguistic computation in speech production known as morpho-syntactic processing.
Biography
Dr. Ziv Williams is a neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital. He received his medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and has been in practice between 11-20 years.
Neuroscience Care at Mass General
Through a combination of unmatched expertise, creativity and compassion, Mass General Neuroscience relentlessly advances the fields of Neurosurgery, Neurology and Psychiatry to unleash our patients’ potential.