2019 SPEAKERS
Keynote: Dr. Linda Carpenter - Brown University
Linda L. Carpenter, MD is a Professor of Psychiatry in the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Chief of the Mood Disorders Program at Butler Hospital. Dr. Carpenter completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan, her MD from the University of Pennsylvania, and internship in internal medicine, a residency program in psychiatry, and a clinical neuroscience research fellowship at Yale University. She joined the faculty at Brown in 1997 and has continued her path as a physician-scientist investigating the neurobiology of, and new treatments for, major depression and other mood and anxiety disorders. She led a 10-year, federally funded translational research program focusing on the development of laboratory biomarkers signaling risk for mood/anxiety disorders, and understanding the impact of early life stress on adult biology. She has also conducted a number of randomized clinical trials sponsored by industry and NIH, investigating investigational drugs and devices for treating depression, including Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS), Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS). She is the founding Director of the Butler Hospital TMS Clinic and Neuromodulation Research Facility where she treats patients with pharmacoresistant depression and works with a variety of Brown-based research faculty who incorporate noninvasive brain stimulation techniques into their clinical research into psychiatric disorders. Her current research projects involve using imaging and EEG biomarkers to optimize and individually customize TMS therapy for depression.
Dr. Carpenter will be presenting the Keynote Address.
Dr. Carpenter will be presenting the Keynote Address.
Dr. Andrea Antal - Gottingen University Medical School
Andrea Antal, PhD, is an extraordinary professor at the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany. The primary aim of her research group is to develop and establish new non-invasive brain stimulation methods and protocols to induce physiological changes in the central nervous system in order to investigate cognition and restore maladaptive plasticity. Dynamic modifications of neuronal networks are an important substrate for learning and memory formation. Furthermore, pathological neuroplasticity might be one foundation of numerous central nervous system diseases. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) as a tool aims to induce prolonged neuronal excitability and activity changes in the human brain via alterations of the neuronal membrane potential. Accordingly, this method is a promising tool in the treatment of diseases that are accompanied by changes of the inhibitory-excitatory balance in the brain. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) and random noise stimulation (tRNS), developed by her group in Göttingen, are relatively new stimulation techniques influencing cortical activity; they permit, due to the oscillating stimulation, external interference with the cortical oscillations. Neuronal oscillations in the brain are associated with the processing of sensory information, learning, cognition, arousal, attention and also pathological conditions (e.g. Parkinson's tremor, epilepsy), therefore, the external modulation of cortical oscillations could be an important component of induced cerebral plasticity.
Dr. Antal will be presenting Transcranial alternating current and random noise stimulation: Ready for clinical practice?
Dr. Antal will be presenting Transcranial alternating current and random noise stimulation: Ready for clinical practice?
Dr. Simon Davis - Duke University
Simon W Davis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Duke University School of Medicine, where he co-directs the Brain Stimulation Research Center and the leads the Imaging Core of the Bryan Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. After a BS at New College of Florida, Simon completed postgraduate degrees at University College London and Duke University. The research in his lab centers around the use of structural and functional imaging and neurophysiological measures to study the shifts in network architecture in the aging brain. Work in the lab has focused on the discovery of reliable age-related phenomena, including the anterior shift in cortical processing and the benefits of age-related increases in bilateral processing. Currently this involves using novel applications of TMS and concurrent EEG and fMRI to model the response to TMS and enhance working and episodic memory in older adults, hopefully leading to the use of network-modulated TMS for clinical applications in age-related disorders.
Dr. Davis will be presenting Using TMS to Identify Compensatory Networks in Aging.
Dr. Davis will be presenting Using TMS to Identify Compensatory Networks in Aging.
Dr. Crystal Engineer - The University of Texas at Dallas
Dr. Crystal Engineer is a Research Assistant Professor at the Texas Biomedical Device Center at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Engineer’s lab is focused on understanding and improving the auditory processing impairments observed in neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism. Her current research interests focus on developing potential adjunctive interventions that can increase the neural and behavioral benefits of auditory rehabilitation therapies. She combines behavioral testing and neurophysiological recordings with interventions such as vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), pharmacological treatment, or auditory training. Her research has received support from funding agencies including the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, CDMRP, and the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Engineer will be presenting Vagus nerve stimulation as a potential adjuvant to auditory training in rodent models of autism.
Dr. Engineer will be presenting Vagus nerve stimulation as a potential adjuvant to auditory training in rodent models of autism.
Dr. Michael Fox - Harvard Medical School
Dr. Fox is an Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Laboratory for Brain Network Imaging and Modulation. He is Co-Director of the BIDMC Deep Brain Stimulation Program, Associate Director of the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation, Assistant Neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a practicing clinical neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Dr. Fox received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Ohio State University in 2001 and an MD and Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 2008. Following a medical internship at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, he completed his Neurology Residency and Movement Disorders Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He joined the faculty of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in 2014.
Dr. Fox will be presenting Optimizing TMS targets for depression using the human-brain connectome.
Dr. Fox received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Ohio State University in 2001 and an MD and Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 2008. Following a medical internship at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, he completed his Neurology Residency and Movement Disorders Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He joined the faculty of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in 2014.
Dr. Fox will be presenting Optimizing TMS targets for depression using the human-brain connectome.
Dr. David Grayden - The University of Melbourne
Professor David Grayden is Clifford Chair of Neural Engineering, Melbourne School of Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia. He completed BE(Honors) in Electrical & Electronic Engineering in 1991, BSc in Computer Science in 1991, and PhD in Electrical & Electronic Engineering in 1999 at The University of Melbourne. He spent nine years at The Bionic Ear Institute (now Bionics Institute), Australia before his current appointment at The University of Melbourne. He was inaugural Head of Department of Biomedical Engineering, Melbourne School of Engineering, March 2017 – May 2019. David’s main research interests are in understanding how the brain processes information, how best to present information to the brain using medical bionics, such as the bionic ear and bionic eye, and how to record information from the brain, such as for brain-machine interfaces. He is also conducting research in epileptic seizure prediction and electrical stimulation to prevent or stop epileptic seizures, and in electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve to control inflammatory bowel disease.
Dr. Grayden will be presenting Brain stimulation with a chronically implanted endovascular stent-based electrode array.
Dr. Grayden will be presenting Brain stimulation with a chronically implanted endovascular stent-based electrode array.
Dr. Nir Grossman - Imperial College London
Nir is an assistant professor at Imperial College London and a founding fellow of the UK Dementia Research Institute. The long-term goal of his research is to develop neuromodulatory interventions for brain disorders by direct control of the aberrant neural activity. Nir received a BSc in physics from the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion), an MSc in electromagnetic engineering from the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, and a PhD in neuroscience from Imperial College London. He then completed a postdoc training, as a Wellcome Trust Fellow, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University. Nir was recently awarded the 2018 Science & PINS Prize for Neuromodulation for describing how temporal interfering of electric fields can stimulate deep brain structures non-invasively.
Dr. Grossman will be presenting Non invasive deep brain stimulation via Temporally Interfering electric fields.
Dr. Grossman will be presenting Non invasive deep brain stimulation via Temporally Interfering electric fields.
Dr. Aysegul Gunduz - University of Florida
Aysegul Gunduz is an Associate Professor at the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida. Her research interests include neural interfacing, neural signal processing, neuromodulation, neurological disorders, as well as cortical and deep brain stimulation in human subjects. Dr. Gunduz earned her BS, MS, and PhD degrees in electrical engineering and she received postdoctoral training at Albany Medical College, Department of Neurology, and at the Wadsworth Center, Division of Translational Medicine in Albany, NY. For her efforts in developing closed-loop deep brain stimulation she has received early career awards from the National Science Foundation and the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering. She also leads a BRAIN Initiative clinical trial for developing closed-loop deep brain stimulation for the improved treatment of essential tremor.
Dr. Gunduz will be presenting Stimulation on Demand: Developing closed-loop deep brain stimulation systems.
Dr. Gunduz will be presenting Stimulation on Demand: Developing closed-loop deep brain stimulation systems.
Dr. Suzanne Haber - University of Rochester Medical Center
Dr. Haber focuses on the neural network that underlies incentive learning and decision-making that leads to the development of action plans. The cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic system is central to this network and comprises a diverse group of structures involved in reward and motivation, cognition, and motor control. Pathology of this network is implicated in several mental health disorders including drug addition, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and schizophrenia.
Dr. Stephanie Jones - Brown University
Stephanie R. Jones, PhD is Associate Professor in Department of Neuroscience at Brown University. She received her doctorate in mathematics from Boston University, followed by training in neuroscience and human magneto- and electro-encephalography (MEG/EEG) at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research program integrates these disciplines to develop biophysically principled computational neural models that bridge the critical gap between human MEG/EEG brain imaging signals and their underlying cellular and network level generators. She collaborates extensively with animal neurophysiologists, cognitive neuroscientists, and clinicians to develop data constrained models that are translationally relevant. Her group has recently developed their unique neural modeling into a user friendly software tool for researchers and clinicians to interpret the circuit origin of their human MEG/EEG data: Human Neocortical Neurosolver. Dr. Jones’s group is currently expanding their interdisciplinary program to the field of non-invasive brain stimulation. A primary goal is to translate an understanding of the network mechanism underlying non-invasively measured brain signals into brain stimulation strategies to improve disrupt brain function.
Dr. Jones will be presenting Biophysically Principled Neural Modeling of EEG Signals to Study the Circuit Level Impact of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation.
Dr. Jones will be presenting Biophysically Principled Neural Modeling of EEG Signals to Study the Circuit Level Impact of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation.
Dr. Kenneth Tucker Kishida - University of Wake Forest
Dr. Kenneth T. Kishida is an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and the Department of Neurosurgery at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Dr. Kishida earned his B.S. in Genetics at the University of California, Davis and his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. As a postdoctoral fellow, he developed technology that resulted in the world’s first real-time measurements of dopamine and serotonin release in the human brain during conscious decision-making behavior. He now uses this technology (‘human electrochemistry’) as well as non-invasive brain imaging (e.g., fMRI and MEG) to investigate basic - computationally framed - questions about the neural mechanisms underlying decision-making and conscious experience in humans.Further, in collaboration with psychiatry and neurology, Dr. Kishida applies his these tools to investigate the neurocomputational underpinnings of brain disorders like depression, impulse control disorder, and substance use disorders.
Dr. Kishida will be presenting Intracranial Electrochemistry - real-time monitoring of dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine in conscious humans.
Dr. Kishida will be presenting Intracranial Electrochemistry - real-time monitoring of dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine in conscious humans.
Dr. Georg Kranz - The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Georg S. Kranz is an Austrian psychologist and neuroscientist. He earned his BSc and MSc degrees in Psychology from the University of Vienna, and his PhD in Clinical Neuroscience from the Medical University of Vienna. Georg received postdoctoral training at Rupert Lanzenberger’s Neuroimaging Lab at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical University of Vienna. Since 2018, he is a Research Assistant Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research focuses on serotonergic neurotransmission in psychiatric disorders using positron emission tomography (PET) and fMRI. Georg has conducted a number of randomized clinical trials on the effects of psychopharmacological and non-invasive brain stimulation interventions in psychiatric disorders in Vienna. He is the founding head of the TMS lab at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical University of Vienna.
Dr. Kranz will be presenting Non-invasive brain stimulation, monoaminergic neurotransmission and neuroplasticity.
Dr. Kranz will be presenting Non-invasive brain stimulation, monoaminergic neurotransmission and neuroplasticity.
Dr. Christa McIntyre - University of Texas at Dallas
Christa McIntyre is an Associate Professor of Cognition and Neuroscience in the school of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. She investigates the physiological mechanisms that contribute to the rapid consolidation of emotionally arousing memories and aims to tap into those mechanisms to drive neural plasticity and memory consolidation for therapeutic gains. As part of this research, she found that stimulation of the vagus nerve promotes memory consolidation and synaptic plasticity while, at the same time, reducing anxiety. These findings suggest that vagus nerve stimulation may enhance the effects of exposure-based therapies that are used to treat anxiety disorders and posttraumatic stress disorders. Dr. McIntyre also uses behavioral pharmacology, optogenetics, and molecular approaches to study interactions of the amygdala with other memory systems in the brain. Dr. McIntyre earned her bachelor’s degree from the American University and her PhD from the University of Virginia. Before joining the faculty at the University of Texas in Dallas, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine.
Dr. McIntyre will be presenting Preclinical studies of vagus nerve stimulation as a potential adjunct to exposure-based therapies.
Dr. McIntyre will be presenting Preclinical studies of vagus nerve stimulation as a potential adjunct to exposure-based therapies.
Dr. Maryam Shanechi - University of Southern California
Maryam M. Shanechi is Assistant Professor and Viterbi Early Career Chair in Electrical Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California (USC). She is also a faculty member at the Neuroscience Graduate Program at USC. Prior to joining USC, she was Assistant Professor at Cornell University’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She received her B.A.Sc. degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto in 2004 and her S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2006 and 2011, respectively. She held postdoctoral positions at Harvard Medical School and at UC Berkeley from 2011-2013. She directs the Neural Systems Engineering Lab at USC. Her research is focused on developing closed-loop neurotechnologies through mathematical decoding and control of brain networks to treat neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. She is the recipient of various awards including the NSF CAREER Award, the MIT Technology Review’s top 35 innovators under the age of 35 (TR35), the Popular Science Brilliant 10, an ARO multidisciplinary university research initiative (MURI) award, and the ONR Young investigator award.
Dr. Shanechi will be presenting Neural Decoding and Control of Mood to Treat Neuropsychiatric Disorders.
Dr. Shanechi will be presenting Neural Decoding and Control of Mood to Treat Neuropsychiatric Disorders.
Dr. Vikaas Sohal - University of California at San Francisco
Dr. Sohal earned his A.B. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University, his M.A.St. in Mathematics from Cambridge, and his MD, PhD from Stanford University. He completed his graduate work in the lab of John Huguenard, then stayed at Stanford to completed his psychiatry residency and a postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Karl Deisseroth. Dr. Sohal's research focuses on how the prefrontal cortex carries out important cognitive functions, and how this may be disrupted in the setting of neuropsychiatric disease. Dr. Sohal is also a board certified psychiatrist and continues to see outpatients approximately one half day each week.
Dr. Sohal will be presenting Optogenetic stimulation of interneurons to modulate decision making and emotional behaviors.
Dr. Sohal will be presenting Optogenetic stimulation of interneurons to modulate decision making and emotional behaviors.
Dr. Gregor Thut - University of Glasgow
Gregor Thut, PhD, is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow, and Director of its Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (CCNi). His research interfaces human electrophysiology and non-invasive transcranial brain stimulation, with an emphasis on how dynamic network activity in the human brain, inferred from brain oscillations, relates to perception, attention and cognition.
Dr. Thut will be presenting Probing and manipulation of brain oscillations & associated functions by combined transcranial stimulation and EEG.
Dr. Thut will be presenting Probing and manipulation of brain oscillations & associated functions by combined transcranial stimulation and EEG.
Dr. Seung-Schik Yoo - Harvard Medical School
Dr. Seung-Schik Yoo is an associate professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, and is a director of Neuromodulation and Tissue Engineering Laboratory (NTEL), Brigham and Women's Hospital. He also serves as a faculty member of Mind Brain Behavior at Harvard University. He has done early pioneering works in developing real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging that are used to interpret the human mind, and applied the technology to interface the brain function with machines and computers. Later, he developed a new mode of non-invasive brain stimulation modality which utilizes the focused ultrasound waves to control regional neural functions, including the activity of the brain. He is primarily interested in advancing the technique for various neurotherapeutics, but also likes to seek out new ways to link thought/brain processes between individuals. Seung-Schik also developed a three-dimensional bioprinter that can ‘print out’ artificial brain tissues and organoids for potential applications in neural computers and medical applications.
Dr. Yoo will be presenting Low-Intensity Transcranial Focused Ultrasound with Neurotherapeutic and Diagnostic Potentials.
Dr. Yoo will be presenting Low-Intensity Transcranial Focused Ultrasound with Neurotherapeutic and Diagnostic Potentials.
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