Researcher | Research Overview
My research program investigates the inherited metabolic epilepsies, with continuous NIH funding the past twenty years in clinical, laboratory, neurophysiologic, and neuroimaging investigations in the disorders of GABA metabolism. We are currently running the natural history study of succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase deficiency (SSADHD), and previously characterized the phenotype and associated manifestations of SSADHD as well as GABA transaminase deficiency. We are also running natural history studies and therapeutic trials in aromatic aminoacid decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency, a disorder of monoamine synthesis, and pyridoxal-5-phosphate dependent epilepsy. Other research projects are focused on interictal high frequency oscillations ability to serve as noninvasive biomarkers of epileptogenicity in medically refractory pediatric epilepsy and the study of autonomic and stress responses in children with epilepsy. New projects including service as the central pediatric EEG reading site for the NINDS multicenter of Long COVID.
A related research area is in neuro-humanities, specifically regarding the cerebral processing of music and the neurobiological underpinnings of musical creativity. This includes construction of the music curriculum of the series, Neurology Through Art and Time, sponsored by the International Child Neurology Association and the course, American Creativity, Ingenuity, and Diversity that portrays how American literature and music has contributed to these elements of American culture.
Researcher | Research Background
Phillip L. Pearl, M.D. is Director of Epilepsy and Clinical Neurophysiology at Boston Children’s Hospital and William G. Lennox Chair and Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Pearl, originally from Baltimore, attended Johns Hopkins University and Peabody Conservatory of Music, and University of Maryland School of Medicine. He took his residency at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. He was Division Chief of Neurology at Children’s National Medical Center and Professor of Neurology, Pediatrics, and Music at the George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, DC, where he spent 23 years from 1990-2013, until relocating to Boston in January 2014. Dr. Pearl just recently completed his 2-year term as President of the Professors of Child Neurology and 6-year term as a member of the Neurology Residency Review Committee of the ACGME.
