Dr. James Xiang Tao, MD

James Tao, MD, PhD, specializes in the diagnosis and management of seizure disorders and epilepsy syndromes. Dr. Tao is interested in the use of surgery and vagal nerve stimulation for treating patients with medically resistant epilepsy. As director of the Electroencephalography (EEG) Laboratory at the University of Chicago, he oversees EEG studies that diagnose epileptic seizure and localize it in the patient’s brain to help guide surgical resection. In his basic research laboratory, Dr. Tao studies how the connections between neurons relate to epileptogenesis--the biological changes in a normal brain that lead to the development of epilepsy. His clinical research focuses on the use of different types of imaging, including 3-dimensional computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to guide epilepsy surgery.