Speakers

Speaker: Alexander Opitz - University of Minnesota

Alexander Opitz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on developing non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) technologies for psychiatric and neurological disorders. Dr. Opitz has a particular interest in the underlying biophysics and physiology of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial electric stimulation (TES).

Speaker: Bradley R. Postle - University of Wisconsin

Bradley R. Postle is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received his PhD in systems neuroscience from MIT, under the supervision of Suzanne Corkin, then received postdoctoral training, with an emphasis on event-related fMRI, at the University of Pennsylvania, from Mark D'Esposito. He is associate editor at the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience and at eNeuro, and the second edition of his textbook, Essentials of Cognitive Neuroscience, appears in Spring 2020.

Bradley R. Postle will be speaking about: Probing neurophysiology and cognition with transcranial magnetic stimulation

Speaker: Dr. Caterina Gratton- Northwestern University

Dr. Gratton is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Northwestern University, with a secondary appointment in Neurology and affiliations with the interdepartmental neuroscience (NUIN) and Cognitive Science programs. Dr. Gratton received her B.S. from the University of Illinois in Psychology and Neuroscience and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked with Mark D’Esposito and Michael Silver. Subsequently, Dr. Gratton did a postdoctoral fellowship with Steve Petersen at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Gratton’s research focuses on the organization and function of human brain networks and how they contribute to goal-directed cognition. Furthermore, she is interested in how these processes break down with damage and disease. Dr. Gratton uses a multifaceted approach, adopting a variety of methods, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), recordings from patients, and pharmacological manipulations to study how brain system functions. Her research suggests that the organizational properties of brain networks have important consequences for how humans accomplish complex tasks and how the brain reorganizes after damage. These findings have implications for how we understand the multi-level complexity of human brain function. Dr. Gratton was recently named an American Psychological Society “Rising Star” in honor of this work.

Dr. Caterina Gratton will be speaking about: States and traits in human functional brain networks

Speaker: Daniel Blumberg- University of Toronto

Dr. Blumberger completed his medical school training at the University of Toronto where he also completed his residency training in psychiatry. He completed a Research Fellowship in Brain Stimulation and Geriatric Psychiatry at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He is the Medical Head and Co-Director of the Temerty Centre for Therapeutic Brain Intervention at CAMH. His clinical expertise is on the use of brain stimulation therapies for refractory psychiatric disorders. His main research focuses on novel treatments and understanding the neurophysiology of treatment resistant depression across the lifespan. He is the principal investigator or co-investigator on numerous clinical trials using different brain stimulation modalities.

Daniel Blumberger will be speaking about: Theta Burst Stimulation for Depression: Current Status and Future Directions

Speaker: Hirofumi Morishita- Icahn School of Medicine

Hirofumi Morishita is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Neuroscience and Ophthalmology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms of developmental critical periods for cortical maturation to establish perception and cognition relevant to neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. His laboratory takes an integrated approach, combining molecular, anatomical, imaging, electrophysiological, and behavior methodologies using mouse models. Hirofumi Morishita received his PhD from Osaka University after Psychiatry residency at National Center Hospital of Neurology and Psychiatry in Tokyo and medical school training at Kyushu University (MD). Before joining Mount Sinai, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Takao Hensch lab, Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, where he established preclinical therapeutic strategies for recovery of vision in adulthood (Morishita et al. Science 2010). His current research at Mt. Sinai aims to translate the critical period principle beyond vision to more complex cognitive functions such as attentional and social behavior.

Hirofumi Morishita will be speaking about: Optogenetic modulation of prefrontal circuitry to improve cognitive and social behavior

Speaker: Jason Samaha- UC Santra Cruz

Jason Samaha is an assistant professor in the Psychology Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he heads the Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience lab. Our lab uses brain stimulation and electrophysiology in humans to understand the neural correlates and computations underlying perceptual decision making, perceptual consciousness, and top-down control. Recent work in our lab has focused on the role of spontaneous alpha-band oscillations in models of perceptual decision making and on testing theories of oscillatory-based discrete sampling in visual perception. My talk here will cover our recently proposed computational model for how ongoing alpha power changes perception. I will focus on this model as a test case for how linking brain oscillations and perception via computational models can inform attempts at modulating oscillatory activity with brain stimulation.

Jason Samaha will be speaking about: Why modeling the impact of neural oscillations on behavior can help us understand neurostimulation effects

Speaker: Paul Sauseng - Ludwig-Maximilians University

Paul Sauseng is Professor for Biological Psychology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany. Before that he held a Professorship in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Surrey, UK, after being a fellow of the Austrian Academy of Science and doing post-doctoral research in Hamburg, Tuebingen, both Germany, and Salzburg, Austria, where Paul had earned his PhD. Research-wisePaul is interested in how (visual) working memory, visual attention and executive control are implemented and coordinated on acortical level, and which neuronal mechanisms are involved in limitations of cognitive processing capacities. Therefore, he primarily investigates oscillatory brain activity using electroencephalography, transcranial magnetic and transcranial electric stimulation.

Paul Sauseng will be speaking about: What we can learn about working memory by modulating and probing human theta oscillations

Speaker: Dr. Regina Lapate- University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Regina Lapate is an affective neuroscientist investigating the neural mechanisms that underlie adaptive responding to emotional events. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, and an incoming Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has published a number of articles in leading psychology and neuroscience journals on the neural bases of emotion regulation and the role of conscious awareness in emotion, and co-edited the 2nd edition of The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions (2018). Her NIH-funded work focuses on the representational properties and causal role of lateral prefrontal function in emotion using a multimodal approach that integrates across behavioral assays, neuroimaging (fMRI) and causal methods (transcranial magnetic stimulation/TMS).

Dr. Regina Lapate will be speaking about: Lateral prefrontal representations causally modulate emotional bias: A TMS/fMRI study