Research Projects

Project Summary Approximately, 40% of TBI patients discharged from the hospital will develop long-term disability with 70% experiencing chronic cognitive impairments that disrupt vocational, social, and emotional functioning. To foster the reentry of people with severe to moderate traumatic brain injury (smTBI) back into society, as envisioned by the Americans with Disabilities Act, we need to understand the opportunities and challenges posed by cognitive restoration.

PROJECT SUMMARY Deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive DBS systems are currently used in children with dystonia, epilepsy, and Tourette Syndrome, and its use is expanding to other neuropsychiatric conditions. Yet, there is no empirical neuroethics research that focuses on pediatric DBS (pDBS) nor any decision support tools to guide families and clinicians through this difficult decision-making process.

Project Summary/Abstract Ethical concerns raised from both current and historically controversial psychosurgeries are driving disparities in accessibility to emerging BRAIN Initiative technology for those with severe, disabling, chronic mental illness like individuals with treatment-refractory schizophre

SUMMARY The BRAIN Initiative seeks to accelerate the development and application of innovative technologies that ultimately will revolutionize our understanding of the human brain.

Project Summary/Abstract The connections between different brain regions play an important role in normal brain function. This project proposes to create an end-to-end pipeline for analysis of human white matter connections using “tractometry” methods. In tractometry, tissue properties are estimated in the long-range connections between remote brain regions. The project will focus on the analysis of the Human Connectome Project diffusion MRI dataset, which provides one of the largest available publicly available datasets of diffusion MRI from a sample of normal healthy individuals.

Abstract One of the high priority research areas listed in the BRAIN 2025 Report is a better understanding of the brain network dynamics across time and space from human electrophysiological recordings.

Linking molecular and anatomical features of brain cell identity through computational data integration Abstract The brain contains diverse cell types that vary widely in characteristic properties and function in complex, interconnected circuits. A complete definition of cellular identity in the brain requires incorporating both molecular and anatomical properties, including gene expression, epigenetic regulation, spatial position, and axonal projection patterns. However, existing experimental approaches cannot measure all of these features simultaneously within individual cells.

PROJECT SUMMARY The highly-organized intrinsic brain activity, as measured by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI), is being widely used to measure functional brain connectivity in both healthy subjects and patient groups, despite the underlying neural mechanisms remain largely unclear. Converging evidence has suggested that infra-slow propagating activity may play an important role in generating rsfMRI connectivity and dynamics, and it thus could be the key to understanding the neural basis of rsfMRI connectivity and the functional role of intrinsic brain activity.

PROJECT SUMMARY Perivascular spaces are a critical component of the glia-lymphatic circuit, facilitating the clearance of soluble waste. The role of perivascular spaces and changes in the brain’s clearance system in normal development, aging, and cognition is not fully understood, mainly due to lack of neuroimaging capabilities. However, noninvasive in vivo mapping of the perivascular space fluid with high accuracy and reliability is now made possible with our recent analytical developments, using human connectome project (HCP) data.

ABSTRACT A fundamental ethical tenet in medicine is bodily sovereignty, inherent in which is the concept of control. Over the past 10 years, there has been considerable discussion in the neuroethics literature concerning the loss of control attributed to neuromodulation devices, specifically deep brain stimulation (DBS), with a focus on reduced control related to undesired personality changes. Many of these concerns either explicitly or implicitly focus on the invasiveness of the DBS device.