Dr. Nagahama is an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, who specializes in epilepsy surgery and pediatric neurosurgery. He serves as Director of Pediatric Epilepsy Surgery.
Dr. Nagahama received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania in 2007. He received his medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 2012. During his medical training, he was awarded with a prestigious HHMI-NIH Research Scholars Program (“Cloister Program”) fellowship, sponsored by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). The fellowship enabled him to spend a dedicated year in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under the guidance of a world-renowned neuroscientist Dr. Leslie Ungerleider, investigating a higher-order brain function involved in complex processing of visual information.
Dr. Nagahama completed a residency in neurosurgery at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics under the mentorship of Dr. Matthew Howard, a prominent epilepsy surgeon in the lineage of Dr. George Ojemann. During his residency training, he spent elective time in Tokyo, Japan, learning complex glioma surgery with use of intraoperative MRI, language mapping, and additional neurophysiologic monitoring. He subsequently completed a functional neurosurgery fellowship at UCLA Medical Center, with a focus on adult and pediatric epilepsy surgery under the mentorship of renowned epilepsy surgeons Dr. Itzhak Fried and Dr. Aria Fallah. He finally completed a pediatric neurosurgery fellowship at Children’s Hospital Colorado, with a continued focus on pediatric epilepsy surgery.
Dr. Nagahama specializes in epilepsy surgery as well as general pediatric neurosurgery. He utilizes all types of epilepsy surgery techniques, ranging from traditional resection/disconnection and neuromodulation surgery, such as lesionectomy, anterior temporal lobectomy, corpus callosotomy, functional hemispherotomy, and vagal nerve stimulation, to minimally invasive MRI-guided laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT), to newer neuromodulation techniques, such as responsive neurostimulation (RNS) and deep brain stimulation (DBS). He also utilizes intracranial recording, both craniotomy for electrode placement and stereo-electroencephalography (stereo-EEG), to localize a seizure focus and guide epilepsy surgery. In the multi-disciplinary epilepsy team, he works closely with experts in epileptology, neuroradiology, neuropsychology, and neurorehabilitation, in order to provide the individualized and optimum care for each patient with drug-refractory epilepsy.
In addition, Dr. Nagahama specializes in treatment of pediatric neurosurgical conditions, including pediatric brain tumors, hydrocephalus, Chiari malformations, spinal dysraphism, and craniofacial abnormalities. He also specializes in treatment of adult brain tumors requiring use of intraoperative neurophysiologic monitoring.
Dr. Nagahama has a research focus on epilepsy surgery outcome, in particular optimization of seizure and neuropsychological outcomes for epilepsy surgery. His research also focuses on use of intracranial recording to investigate the mechanisms of epilepsy and the neurocognitive processes unique to humans. He has extensively published peer-reviewed articles in leading neurosurgical journals, particularly in the field of epilepsy surgery.
Currently, Dr. Nagahama sees and treats patients at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, University Hospital at Rutgers – New Jersey Medical School, and Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.
Epilepsy Surgery, Pediatric Neurosurgery, Seizure outcome and safety of epilepsy surgery, Neuropsychological outcome of epilepsy surgery, Higher-order neurocognitive processes