Juan Pascual, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor

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Juan M. Pascual, M.D., Ph.D., is the inaugural holder of The Once Upon a Time Foundation Professorship in Pediatric Neurologic Diseases and the holder of the Ed and Sue Rose Distinguished Professorship in Neurology.

Dr. Pascual provides both pediatric and adult neurology care. Adults should contact the Neurology Clinic at James. W. Aston Ambulatory Care Center at 214-645-8800 to make an appointment. For pediatric appointments, please contact Children’s Medical Center using the online scheduling form, or by calling 214-456-2768.

Dr. Pascual is a tenured Professor in four Departments at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas: Neurology, Physiology, Pediatrics and the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth & Development / Center for Human Genetics, and is Director of the Rare Brain Disorders Program (Clinic and Laboratory). He is also a member of the Division of Pediatric Neurology, of the graduate Ph.D. programs in Neuroscience and Integrative Biology, and of the postgraduate clinical training programs in Neurology, Pediatric Neurology, Pediatrics and Medical Genetics. He also teaches at the UT Southwestern Medical School.

In addition, Dr. Pascual is an adjunct professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, The University of Texas at Dallas.

Dr. Pascual directs a highly collaborative research laboratory and is credentialed campus-wide at Children's Medical Center Dallas, UT Southwestern University Hospitals and Clinics and Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he consults on inpatients and outpatients with particularly complex or severe diseases. Much of his research is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

His laboratory research interests span virtually the entire field of neuroscience, including medical neuroscience, from molecular structure and function (including drug action), neural physiology and metabolism at the cellular, circuit and whole-brain level and neurogenetics, all of which is complemented with neurological patient care and clinical trials. Laboratory research greatly influences his clinical activities and patient observations guide his laboratory research direction.

Dr. Pascual received his M.D. degree with unique distinction from the Universidad de Granada, Spain, one of the oldest universities in the world, founded in 1349 by Yusuf I, Sultan of Granada and one of the builders of the Alhambra. He received his Ph.D. degree in Molecular Physiology and Biophysics from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, under Arthur M. Brown, MD, PhD, McCollum Professor and Chair. His postdoctoral research was conducted under Arthur Karlin, PhD, Higgins Professor and Director of the Center for Molecular Recognition, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and, later, at the Colleen Giblin Research Laboratories for Pediatric Neurology at the same institution under a Neurological Sciences Academic Development Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. He also received residency training in Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine - St. Louis Children’s Hospital and in Neurology and Pediatric Neurology at the Neurological Institute of New York - Columbia University Medical Center. He received certification in Neurology with Special Qualification in Child Neurology from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

As one of few actively practising pediatric neurologists in the nation who is also a laboratory scientist, Dr. Pascual is interested in the molecular mechanisms that cause inherited metabolic and excitability disorders using electrophysiology and nuclear magnetic resonance (MRI) both in human subjects and in models of human diseases. His laboratory is an integral part of the Department of Neurology. The laboratory is home to scientists from very broad backgrounds and levels of training and expertise who have joined efforts to endow both neurology and human developmental neuroscience with a strong scientific basis.

As a clinician, Dr. Pascual specializes in genetic and metabolic diseases of the nervous and neuromuscular systems of infants, children and adults with a particular emphasis on complex diagnostic problems, second opinions for patients visiting from the rest of the U.S. and abroad, and in clinical trials. Dr. Pascual has special clinical research expertise in rare diseases, glucose metabolism, mitochondrial, degenerative, and multi-organ disorders. 

Dr. Pascual has co-authored over three dozen scientific, medical and philosophical textbooks. He is the editor, together with Dr. Roger Rosenberg of Rosenberg's Molecular and Genetic Basis of Neurological and Psychiatric Disease (5th to current 7th edition, two volumes, near 2000 pages). His textbook Progressive Brain Disorders in Childhood (Cambridge University Press) was published in 2017. He is working on a new book, provisionally entitled Sense & Nonsense in Medical Neuroscience: Inference & Fallacy, to be published by Cambridge University Press.

An avid reader and speaker, Dr. Pascual is also interested in the philosophy of mind. He is particularly concerned with the proper study of the human condition. Thus, he is a critic of errors commonly made by cognitive neuroscientists.

Pascual Laboratory

Recent clinical research studies 

Recent NIH-funded research projects 

Publications

Video lecture: Experimental augmentation of brain function 

Video lecture: Metabolic treatments for brain diseases

Conferencia: Deficiencia de Glut1

Medical School

Universidad de Granada (1990)

Graduate School

Baylor College of Medicine (1995)

Other Post Graduate Training

Columbia University Medical Center (1998)

Internship

Washington University. St. Louis (1999), Pediatrics

Residency

Columbia University Medical Center (2002), Pediatric Neurology

• Brain metabolism
• Causation in neuroscience
• Cellular neurophysiology
• Clinical trials for neurological and genetic disorders
• Complex, rare and undiagnosed diseases
• Critique of neuroscience and neurology concepts
• Genomic analysis in neurological disorders
• Ion channel structure and function
• Mitochondrial disorders
• Motor system neurophysiology and molecular biology
• Neurodegenerative diseases of children
• Neurogenetics
• Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
• Stroke neurophysiology and metabolism

Featured Publications

Metabolic modulation of synaptic failure and thalamocortical hypersynchronization with preserved consciousness in Glut1 deficiency.

Rajasekaran K, Ma Q, Good LB, Kathote G, Jakkamsetti V, Liu P, Avila A, Primeaux S, Enciso Alva J, Markussen KH, Marin-Valencia I, Sirsi D, Hacker PMS, Gentry MS, Su J, Lu H, Pascual JM, Sci Transl Med 2022 Oct 14 665 eabn2956

Recording of pig neuronal activity in the comparative context of the awake human brain.

Dobariya A, El Ahmadieh TY, Good LB, Hernandez-Reynoso AG, Jakkamsetti V, Brown R, Dunbar M, Ding K, Luna J, Kallem RR, Putnam WC, Shelton JM, Evers BM, Azami A, Geramifard N, Cogan SF, Mickey B, Pascual JM, Sci Rep 2022 Sep 12 1 15503

Brain metabolism modulates neuronal excitability in a mouse model of pyruvate dehydrogenase deficiency.

Jakkamsetti V, Marin-Valencia I, Ma Q, Good LB, Terrill T, Rajasekaran K, Pichumani K, Khemtong C, Hooshyar MA, Sundarrajan C, Patel MS, Bachoo RM, Malloy CR, Pascual JM Sci Transl Med 2019 Feb 11 480

Mutations in Disordered Regions Can Cause Disease by Creating Dileucine Motifs.

Meyer K, Kirchner M, Uyar B, Cheng JY, Russo G, Hernandez-Miranda LR, Szymborska A, Zauber H, Rudolph IM, Willnow TE, Akalin A, Haucke V, Gerhardt H, Birchmeier C, Kühn R, Krauss M, Diecke S, Pascual JM, Selbach M Cell 2018 Aug

Triheptanoin for Glucose Transporter Type I Deficiency (G1D): Modulation of Human Ictogenesis, Cerebral Metabolic Rate, and Cognitive Indices by a Food Supplement.

Pascual JM, Liu P, Mao D, Kelly DI, Hernandez A, Sheng M, Good LB, Ma Q, Marin-Valencia I, Zhang X, Park JY, Hynan LS, Stavinoha P, Roe CR, Lu H JAMA Neurol 2014 Aug

Increased glycine contributes to synaptic dysfunction and early mortality in Nprl2 seizure model.

Dentel B, Angeles-Perez L, Ren C, Jakkamsetti V, Holley AJ, Caballero D, Oh E, Gibson J, Pascual JM, Huber KM, Tu BP, Tsai PT, iScience 2022 May 25 5 104334

A subset of synaptic transmission events is coupled to acetyl coenzyme A production.

Jakkamsetti V, Ma Q, Pascual JM, J Neurophysiol 2022 Jan

Mitochondrial disease manifestations in relation to transcriptome location and function.

Jakkamsetti V, Balasubramaniam S, Grover N, Pascual JM, Mol Genet Metab 2021 Dec

Large Animal Models of Glioma: Current Status and Future Prospects.

Hicks WH, Bird CE, Pernik MN, Haider AS, Dobariya A, Abdullah KG, Aoun SG, Bentley RT, Cohen-Gadol AA, Bachoo RM, Mickey BE, Pascual JM, El Ahmadieh TY, Anticancer Res 2021 Nov 41 11 5343-5353

Development and validation of a LC-MS/MS method for quantitation of 3-hydroxypentanoic acid and 3-oxopentanoic acid in human plasma and its application to a clinical study of glucose transporter type I deficiency (G1D) syndrome.

Kallem RR, Primeaux S, Avila A, Pascual JM, Putnam WC, J Pharm Biomed Anal 2021 Aug 205 114335

 Featured Books

Progressive Brain Disorders in Childhood

Pascual JM (Author) (2017). Cambridge University Press

Rosenberg's Molecular and Genetic Basis of Neurological and Psychiatric Disease, Seventh Edition

Pascual, JM (Ed.); Rosenberg, RN (Ed.) (In preparation). Academic Press

Rosenberg's Molecular and Genetic Basis of Neurological and Psychiatric Disease, Sixth Edition

Pascual, JM (Ed.); Rosenberg, RN (Ed.) (2020). Academic Press

Rosenberg's Molecular and Genetic Basis of Neurological and Psychiatric Disease, Fifth Edition

Pascual, JM (Ed.); Rosenberg, RN (Ed.) (2015). Academic Press

• Miembro de honor
  Academia Malagueña de Ciencias (2015)
• 100% Patient satisfaction
  Division of Pediatric Neurology, Children's Medical Center Dallas (2013)
• Elected full member
  Académie Européenne des Sciences, des Arts et des Lettres (2013)
• Research Mentor Award
  Children's Medical Center Dallas (2012)
• Elected corresponding member
  Académie Européenne des Sciences, des Arts et des Lettres (2010)
• Miembro correspondiente
  Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Telmo (2010)
• Young Investigator Award
  Neurobiology of Disease in Children (2009)
• Miembro correspondiente
  Real Academia Española (2004)
• Miembro de número
  Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (2004)