James O. McNamara

James O. McNamara (born September 25, 1942) is an American neurologist and neuroscientist, known for his research of epileptogenesis, the process underlying development and progression of epilepsy. He is the Duke School of Medicine Professor of Neuroscience in the Departments of Neurobiology, Neurology, and Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University. He served as chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Duke from 2002 to 2011 He served on the neuroscience advisory panel of the Klingenstein Foundation from 1995 through 2020 and on the advisory board of the CURE Foundation from 2014 through 2017.

Education McNamara was born in Portage, Wisconsin and raised in Milwaukee. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Marquette University in 1964 and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Michigan in 1968. He served as a neurologist in the United States Army at Fort Hood, Texas from 1971 to 1973. After serving as Chief Resident of Neurology at Duke University in 1973, he conducted postdoctoral research training centered on myelin biochemistry with Stan Appel from 1974 to 1976. He completed a sabbatical studying molecular neurobiology in the laboratory of Stephen Heinemann at the Salk Institute from 1991 to 1992

Research and work His research has centered on mechanisms of epileptogenesis, the process underlying the development and progression of epilepsy. His work has demonstrated that seizure-induced activation of the receptor tyrosine kinase B (TrkB) by its ligand Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) is required for epileptogenesis caused by seizures. Subsequent work elucidated the signaling pathway downstream of TrkB underlying epileptogenesis, namely phospholipase Cg1; this enabled discovery of a novel peptide inhibitor that inhibits epileptogenesis in multiple animal models of epilepsy. Ciba-Geigy Award for VA Cooperative Study on Antiepileptic Drugs, International League Against Epilepsy (1987) Duke School of Medicine Professor of Neuroscience (1993–present) American Epilepsy Society Research Recognition Award, Basic Scientist (1994) Elected to the American Academy of Physicians (1997) Freedom to Discover Award, Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation (2001-2006) Elected to the National Academy of Medicine (2005) C.J. Frederickson Prize of the International Society for Zinc Biology (2012) Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (2013)

Publications Selected papers

Book chapters Purves D., Augustine G.J., Fitzpatrick D, Hall W.C., LaMantia A.S., McNamara J.O. and White, L.E., eds. Neuroscience. Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA. 4th edition 2008. McNamara J.O. Drugs effective in the therapy of the epilepsies. In: Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, (Hardman J.G. and Limbird L.E., eds.), McGraw Hill: New York. 12th edition 2011. McNamara J.O. and Gibbs J.W. The epilepsies: Phenotype and mechanisms. In: Basic Neurochemistry, (Siegel G. J., Albers, W., Brady, A.T. and Price, D. L., eds.), Elsevier: San Diego. 8th edition. 2012.