Child psychiatrist from England named recipient of Lennox-Lombroso Award

The American Epilepsy Society (AES) has announced that David C. Taylor, lately Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, University of Manchester, UK, and a pioneering child psychiatrist, has been named recipient of The William G. Lennox—Cesare T. Lombroso Award for 2012. The award recognizes Dr. Taylor for his extraordinary influence and seminal research on the social, economic, and psychological effects of epilepsy surgery on patients with medically refractory seizures.

The Lennox-Lombroso Award is conferred by AES and the Lennox and Lombroso Trust for Research and Training. Established in 1966, the award is given annually in recognition of lifetime accomplishment and contributions related to epilepsy. It will be presented December 5th during the AES 66th annual meeting and scientific conference in San Diego.

John Huguenard, Ph.D., who chairs the AES awards committee, said, "Dr. Taylor's thoughtful and penetrating research and writings challenged popular concepts of epilepsy and behavior and provided seminal insights that have altered diagnosis, treatment, and research on the behavioral aspects of both childhood and adult epilepsy and completely altered the way experts think about the results of epilepsy surgery."

Dr. Taylor's landmark contributions made early in his career led to a post at Oxford University and Park Hospital for Children. He and is collaborator, Dr. Christopher Ounsted, are considered by many to have essentially created the field of child psychiatry. His work at Oxford was also a major factor in Park Hospital becoming the first National Centre for Children with Epilepsy.

Dr. Taylor was the first to discover focal cortical dysplasia, one of many potential causes of epilepsy. He was the first to investigate the effects of epilepsy surgery on patients, and among the first to recognize there is a gender difference in how rapidly the brain develops. Included in his decades of research is a project in which he personally conducted follow-up interviews of 100 post-surgical temporal lobe epilepsy patients, usually in their homes, an extraordinary commitment to the advancement of understanding considered a tour-de-force unlikely ever to be repeated.