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Biographical Sketch 2013

W. Curt LaFrance, Jr., M.D., M.P.H., is the Director of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Neurology at Rhode Island Hospital (RIH) and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology (Research) in the Departments of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and of Clinical Neurosciences at Brown Medical School. He is the neuropsychiatrist for the RIH Comprehensive Epilepsy Program, Staff Physician at the Providence VAMC and a faculty member of the Brown Institute for Brain Science. He is the Director of the combined neurology/psychiatry residency at Brown University, where he teaches and mentors undergraduates, medical students, residents and fellows in research and clinical practice.

Dr. LaFrance received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from Wake Forest University and his medical degree from the Medical College of Georgia. He completed the combined residency in neurology and psychiatry at Brown Medical School, and he is boarded in both neurology and in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. After residency, he completed a Clinical Research Fellowship in Combined Treatments at Brown University with an institutional NIH T-32 national research service award. He obtained his master of public health from Brown University in 2007.

Dr. LaFrance received a 5 year K23 award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to conduct clinical trials for patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (NES). He was awarded the 2003 Career Development Award by the American Neuropsychiatric Association (ANPA) and the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) 2013 Dreifuss-Penry Epilepsy Award. His biography is included in Marquis Who's Who in the World. He was appointed to the Governor's Permanent Advisory Commission on Traumatic Brain Injury. His academic society memberships include AAN (Fellow), ANPA (Fellow), American Psychiatric Association (Distinguished Fellow), American Epilepsy Society (AES), and Christian Medical & Dental Associations.

Dr. LaFrance serves on the ANPA Committee on Research, has served on the Editorial Boards for Epilepsy & Behavior and Epilepsia, the Review Board of the Journal of Pediatric Neurology, and he is an invited reviewer for Neurology, Brain, American Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Behaviour Research and Therapy, Clinical Neurology & Neurosurgery, Epilepsy Research, Seizure, Movement Disorders and the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. He chaired the 2005 NINDS/NIMH/AES sponsored NES treatment workshop. This international workshop brought neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists and allied health members together to set the direction for future NES research. He received an International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) Visiting Professorship in Chile, partnering with epilepsy centers in Latin America, and he is a Srinivasan Neuroscience Conclave participant in India addressing Global Epilepsy in Low and Middle Income Countries. He serves on the Epilepsy Foundation (EF) Professional Advisory Board. He is a steward for the NINDS Epilepsy Benchmarks, and he serves on the ILAE's Neuropsychiatry Commission, chairing the NES Task Force. He is co-chair of the AES's NES Task Force. He was an Advisor for the DSM-5 Somatoform Disorders Work Group and is a member of the ABPN Certification Exam Committee. He is an affiliate member of the Managing Epilepsy Well Network. He served on the Neuroethics interdisciplinary panel for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and as a reviewer for NINDS, EF, Institute for Mental Health Research, Brainwave Irish Epilepsy Foundation, and The Wellcome Trust's Neuroscience and Mental Health Funding Committee.

His research interests include neuropsychiatric aspects of epilepsy, nonepileptic seizures, psychogenic movement disorders (PMD), somatoform disorders, traumatic brain injury and biomarkers. His research has been funded by the NINDS, AES, EF and Siravo Foundation. He was PI on an AES-EF funded pilot multi-center treatment trial for NES and is studying neuroimaging in TBI and in epilepsy and depression. He has written on and given invited lectures regionally, nationally and internationally on topics in neuropsychiatry, including epilepsy co-morbidities, somatoform disorders, NES, PMD, TBI, integrative medicine, causation and consciousness. He has published in Neurology, American Journal of Psychiatry, Brain, Archives of Neurology, Epilepsia, Epilepsy & Behavior, Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, Current Opinion in Neurology, Seminars in Neurology, International Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, and Current Psychiatry. He is co-editor of the 3rd edition of Gates and Rowan's Nonepileptic Seizures, Cambridge University Press.

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