About Mirela Simon, MD, MSC
Dr. Simon received her Medical degree from Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania and a Master of Science degree in Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health. She did her Neurology residency training at Boston University Medical Center followed by a two-year clinical neurophysiology/epilepsy Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Simon joined the faculty at MGH in 2003 and served as the Medical Director of the Intraoperative Neurophysiology Unit until 2020. She is currently an Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Simon's main research interests include improving and development of new methods of neurophysiologic mapping of the central nervous system (CNS) as well as the neurophysiology of increased cortical excitability and CNS ischemia. She has a broad clinical interest in clinical neurophysiology, particularly its intraoperative applications for prevention of postoperative neurologic deficits and for epilepsy surgery.
Clinical Interests:
- Clinical neurophysiology
- Epilepsy
- Intraoperative neurophysiologic monitoring
Treats:
- Adult
Languages:
- Romanian
Medical Education
- MD, University of Medicine and Pharmacy
- Residency, Boston Medical Center
- Residency, Englewood Hospital
- Fellowship, Brigham and Women's Hospital
American Board Certifications
- Neurology, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
Accepted Insurance Plans
- Aetna
- Beech Street
- Blue Cross Blue Shield
- Blue Cross Blue Shield Medicare
- Cigna
- Commonwealth Care Alliance
- Coventry
- Fallon Health
- Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
- Humana
- Maine Community Health Options
- Mass General Brigham Health Plan
- MassHealth
- Medicaid CT
- Medicaid ME
- Medicaid NH
- Medicaid NY
- Medicaid RI
- Medicaid VT
- Medicare
- Medicare ACO
- Multiplan
- Railroad Medicare
- Senior Whole Health
- TriCare
- Tufts Health Plan
- United Health Care
- Wellpoint
- WellSense
- WellSense NH
Note: This provider may accept more insurance plans than shown; please call the practice to find out if your plan is accepted.
Research
A major emphasis of my research has been to foster a better understanding of the neurophysiology of normal and abnormal cortical excitability and of its fluctuations under certain conditions such as anesthesia and arousals states. This in turn has allowed further exploration of the variability of the depolarization thresholds of the eloquent cortex and thus optimization of a multimodal technique for neurophysiologic functional mapping and monitoring of eloquent structures during supratentorial surgery.
Recently, I have also been working on developing a new method for mapping the dorsal columns of the spinal cord, which has a significant utility during intra-medullary spinal cord tumor resections.
Another significant component of my clinical research has focused on developing and perfecting a reliable neurophysiologic technique for monitoring the spinal cord during thoraco-abdominal aneurysm repair, a surgical procedure that carries a high risk of postoperative paraplegia from spinal cord ischemia. Replacing other methods for intraoperative neuroprotection and monitoring, this neurophysiologic method has had a significant impact in reducing the risk of postoperative paraplegia after these procedures.
Publications
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Simon MV, Cole AJ, Chang EC, Buchbinder BR, Stufflebeam SM, Nozari A, Stemmer-Rachamimov AO, Eskandar EN. An intraoperative multimodal neurophysiologic approach to successful resection of precentral gyrus epileptogenic lesions. Epilepsia. 2012; 53(4):e75-9
Simon MV, Chiappa KH, Borges L. Phase reversal of somatosensory evoked potentials triggered by gracilis tract stimulation: A new technique for neurophysiologic dorsal column mapping. Neurosurgery. 2012; 70 (3): E783-8.
Wang SG, Eskandar EN, Kilbride R, Chiappa KH, Curry W, Williams Z, Simon MV. The variability of stimulus thresholds in electrophysiologic cortical language mapping. J Clin Neurophysiol. 2011; 8(2): 210-216
Simon MV. Intraoperative Neurophysiology. Editor. 2010; New York: Demos Medical
Simon MV, Michaelides C, Wang S, Chiappa KH, Eskandar EN. The effects of EEG suppression and anesthetics on stimulation thresholds in functional cortical motor mapping. Clin Neurophysiol. 2010; 121(5):784-92.