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Caren Armstrong, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurology
To see if Caren Armstrong is accepting new patients, or for assistance finding a UC Davis doctor, please call 800-2-UCDAVIS (800-282-3284).
Locations and Contact
UC Davis Midtown Ambulatory Care Center
Midtown Neurology Clinic
3160 Folsom Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95816
Phone: 916-734-3588
UC Davis Medical Group - Sacramento (Campus Commons)
UC Davis Medical Group - Sacramento (Campus Commons)
500 University Avenue, Ste 230
Sacramento, CA 95825
Philosophy of Care
As both physician and scientist, Dr. Armstrong approaches patient care as a partnership with the patient and family to determine the best options for treatment for the individual based on both what has been studied in the scientific literature as well as the experience and responses of the individual. She likes to involve children in their own care as much as possible given their age and developmental stage so that they learn to manage and advocate for their own health as they grow up.
Clinical Interests
Dr. Armstrong is a pediatric neurologist, epileptologist, and physician scientist whose practice is focused on treating and understanding epilepsy, with a particular interest in how surgical interventions can be used to help treat children with seizures. She has had additional training in epilepsy surgical management, neuromodulation, and neurogenetics in the context of epilepsy.
Research/Academic Interests
Dr. Armstrong's scientific interest spans from how individual cell types (both inhibitory and excitatory cell types) interact at the microcircuit level to how abnormalities in those microcircuits generate abnormalities and seizures that we can see in patients at the larger brain circuit level (macrocircuits). She is interested in how stimulation can be used to evaluate or to change how these cells and networks function to ultimately better treat epilepsy in patients, particularly in the pediatric population. Her lab uses animal models, human brain tissue from patients who have had surgery for their epilepsy, genetic testing, and intracranial stimulation data from patients to study these differences in many types of epilepsy, at many levels of detail, and across many ages.
Division
Pediatric Neurology
Undergraduate School
B.S., Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 2004
Medical School
M.D., Medicine, UC Irvine, Irvine CA 2015
Other School
Ph.D., Biomedical Science, UC Irvine, Irvine CA 2011
Internship
Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore MD 2015-2017
Residency
Pediatric Neurology, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore MD 2017-2020
Fellowship
Epilepsy, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia PA 2020-2022
Guy McKhann Award for resident teaching, Johns Hopkins Hospital, 2020,
Vincent P Carroll Jr Award for Outstanding Research by a graduating Medical Student, University of California, Irvine, 2015,
Early Investigator Prize Runner-up for paper ‘In vivo evaluation of the dentate gate theory in epilepsy’, Journal of Physiology, 2015,
Post-Doctoral Research Training Fellowship, Epilepsy Foundation, 2012,
Public Impact Fellow, University of California, Irvine, 2010,
Dabrowski A, Armstrong C. A Pediatrician’s Guide to Epilepsy Surgery. Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care 2024; 54(7)
Cornblath E, Lucas A, Armstrong C, Greenblatt A, Stein J, Hadar P, Raghupathi R, Marsh ED, Litt B, Davis K, Conrad E. Quantifying trial-by-trial variability during cortico-cortical evoked potential mapping of epileptic networks. Epilepsia. 2023; 64(4):1021-1034
Armstrong C, Zavez A, Mulcahey PJ, Sogawa Y, Gotoff JM, Hagopian S, Minnick J, Marsh ED. Quantitative Electroencephalographic Analysis as a Potential Biomarker of Response to Treatment with Cannabidiol. Epilepsy Research. 2022; 185:106996
Armstrong C, Wang J, Lee SY, Broderick J, Bezaire MJ, Lee SH, Soltesz I. Target‐selectivity of parvalbumin‐positive interneurons in layer II of medial entorhinal cortex in normal and epileptic animals. Hippocampus. 2016; 26(6):779-793
Krook-Magnuson E*, Armstrong C*, Bui A, Lew S, Oijala M, Soltesz I., In vivo evaluation of the dentate gate theory in epilepsy. J. Physiology. 2015; 593(10):2379-2388. *These authors contributed equally to this work
Krook-Magnuson E, Szabo G, Armstrong C, Oijala M, Soltesz I, Cerebellar directed optogenetic intervention inhibits spontaneous hippocampal seizures in a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy. eNeuro. 2014; 1(1):0005-14.2014.2014
Armstrong C*, Krook-Magnuson E*, Oijala M, Soltesz I. Closed Loop Optogenetic Intervention in Mice. Nature Protocols. 2013; 8(8)475-493. *These authors contributed equally to this work
Krook-Magnuson E*, Armstrong C*, Oijala M, Soltesz I., On-demand optogenetic control of spontaneous seizures in temporal lobe epilepsy. Nature Communications. 2013; 4:1376. *These authors contributed equally to this work
Armstrong C, Szabadics J, Tamás G, Soltesz I., Neurogliaform cells in the molecular layer of the dentate gyrus as feed-forward GABAergic modulators of entorhino-hippocampal interplay. J. Comparative Neurology. 2010; 519(8):1476-91
Access a full list of Caren Armstrong's publications here: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8010-0850