Itzhak Fried MD, PhD

Dr. Fried is Professor of Neurosurgery and Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA. He is Director of the Adult Epilepsy Surgery Program there, and is also Co-Director of the Seizure Disorder Center. Concurrently, he is a Professor of Neurosurgery at Tel-Aviv University in Israel. After obtaining a degree in physics at Tel-Aviv University, Dr. Fried completed his Ph.D. at UCLA, and went on to a medical degree at Stanford and neurosurgery training, specializing in epilepsy surgery, at Yale University. He heads the Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory, which is centered on the opportunities to study the human brain afforded by the epilepsy surgery program at UCLA. A small number of these patients have depth electrodes inserted in order to evaluate their seizures for subsequent surgery. It is this opportunity that is used to record the responses of single neurons while the patient performs cognitive tasks. Some aspects of brain function that he and his collaborators have studied, particularly in the medial temporal lobe, are visual perception, memory, navigation, imagery, and motor function.