Richard Wennberg

Dr. Wennberg, MD, PhD, FRCPC, Professor Neurology internationally known for his work in electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), epilepsy, mild traumatic brain injury (concussion), and autoimmune encephalitis. He is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, past Chair of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Examination Board in Neurology (2005-2010), and past President of the Canadian League Against Epilepsy. He is the director of the clinical neurophysiology laboratory and Mitchell Goldhar MEG unit, Krembil Brain Institute, Toronto Western Hospital, and a member of the NHL/NHLPA Second Medical Opinion List. An astute diagnostician, in 1999 Dr. Wennberg described the first case of a young woman with a reversible brain disease caused by an immune response targeting a benign tumor. The disease, which would come to be known as anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, is now the most commonly recognized condition worldwide in the new neurological field of autoimmune encephalitis. Over the past decade, Dr. Wennberg has discovered and described unique clinical and EEG features of the next most common disease in this field, known as anti-LGI1 encephalitis, findings that have facilitated earlier diagnosis and led to the identification of improved treatment options.

Through the early 2000s, Dr. Wennberg investigated the use electrical deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a possible treatment for epilepsy, using EEG to analyze the effects of thalamic DBS upon neocortical and limbic structures of the brain, and studying long-term clinical outcomes with respect to seizure control. Thalamic DBS has since been approved as an adjunctive treatment for medically refractory epilepsy.

In the 2010s, using simultaneous intracranial and scalp EEG, Dr. Wennberg demonstrated for the first time the cortical localization of the K-complex, a hallmark of human sleep and the largest normal graphic element in EEG. Considerable controversy had existed over the 70 years since the initial discovery of the K-complex with regard to its site of origin in the brain, and specifically whether it was generated in superficial cortex or subcortical structures. The identification of the true source of the K-complex and the discovery that the cingulum and related mesial temporal structures of the limbic lobe are uninvolved in its generation pose new questions regarding the role of the K-complex in memory consolidation.

Overall, Dr. Wennberg has published more than 250 scientific articles on topics ranging from the nonlinear dynamics of consciousness to the effects of ice surface size on hockey injuries. He has recently identified, using EEG and MEG, the hippocampal origin of a traveling electromagnetic wave present in humans during sleep, potentially related to memory function. His current research interests are focused on the biophysical bases of EEG and MEG, and on explorations into the neurophysiological mechanisms linking brain function and behavior.