Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Psychologist/Neuroscientist, and Academic |
Academic background | |
Education | B.A., Biophysics/Physics ABD., Mathematics Ph.D., Psychology/Neuroscience |
Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Northeastern University Harvard Medical School |
Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli is an American scientist,psychologist/neuroscientist,academic and researcher. She is a professor of psychology,the Founding Director of the Biomedical Imaging Center at Northeastern University, [1] Researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital,Harvard Medical School and a Research Affiliate of McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [2]
Whitfield-Gabrieli's research is focused on the working of the human brain,its development from childhood through adult maturity,the brain's working in neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders,and the translation of neuroscience knowledge into treatments. She is involved in the development of neuroimaging analysis methods and software packages including CONN, [3] REX,and ART. [4]
Whitfield-Gabrieli studied at University of California,Berkeley (UCB) and completed her bachelor's degree in Biophysics/Physics and her ABD (All But Dissertation) degree in Mathematics in 1988 and 1993,respectively. She received her second Doctoral degree in Psychology/Neuroscience from UCB in 2017. [2]
Whitfield-Gabrieli started as a Research Associate and Teaching Assistant at UC Berkeley during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. She was then associated with EEG Systems Laboratory as a Research Associate from 1993 till 1996 and later as a Project Manager till 1998. She was appointed as a Science and Engineering Associate in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology from 1998 to 2005. In 2005,she was appointed by McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT as a Research Scientist and was promoted to Principal Research Scientist in 2017. She then joined Northeastern University as a professor of Psychology [1] and as Founding Director of the Northeastern University Biomedical Imaging Center (NUBIC) [5] and joined the Department of Psychiatry at MGH,Harvard Medical School in 2022. [6]
Whitfield-Gabrieli's research is focused on discovering brain-based biomarkers for improved diagnosis,early detection of mental disorders,prediction of therapeutic response and the development of novel therapeutic techniques to improve the available treatments. She uses neuroimaging techniques including electrophysiology (EEG),resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), [7] task-based fMRI (t-fMRI),real-time fMRI (rt-fMRI),and diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) to investigate the neural underpinnings of atypical development and the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. She also studied the neural systems underlying the suppression of memories. [8]
Whitfield-Gabrieli's research regarding understanding the etiology of mental illness has revolved around investigations of resting state networks (RSN),called the default mode network (DMN),which is an identified neural system associated with the free wandering of the human mind. She provided evidence for the overlap between the neural systems underlying the two core medial hubs of the DMN and the self-reference network [9] and showed that greater activation and connectivity of these brain regions are positively correlated with more psychopathology in patients suffering from psychiatric illness and in those at-risk for developing mental illness. Further,she showed that individual differences in negative DMN correlations (anticorrelations) with the frontoparietal control network (FPCN) are associated with individual differences in executive function and are significantly reduced in psychiatric populations with cognitive impairment. [10] Furthermore,her group has also demonstrated a causal relation between DMN activity and attentional performance [11] and more recently has demonstrated that DMN/FPCN anticorrelations significantly predict fluctuations in mind wandering. [12]
Whitfield-Gabrieli has demonstrated that baseline RSNs predict future progression of psychopathology in young children years later, [13] conversion to illness in individuals who are clinically and genetically at high-risk [14] [15] and predict treatment response to cognitive behavioral therapy in social anxiety disorder. [16] She employs real-time fMRI neurofeedback to train individuals how to modulate their brain function and has coupled this intervention with mindfulness meditation to mitigate DMN hyperactivation/hyperconnectivity and the associated clinical symptoms in patients suffering from psychiatric illness. [17]
Whitfield-Gabrieli has conducted research regarding the development of innovative neuroimaging analysis methods and software packages. She developed a toolbox called ART, [4] which facilitated the detection and correction of artifacts in fMRI task activation and resting state functional connectivity data.
In 2009,she formed a collaboration with Alfonso Nieto Castanon to develop a toolbox for resting state and task based functional connectivity called CONN. [3] They implemented an alternative method of noise reduction,called the anatomical CompCor approach,that did not rely on global signal regression in order to facilitate the interpretation of anticorrelations. Her research indicated that the aforementioned approach for noise reduction increased specificity and sensitivity and allowed for the interpretation of anti-correlations. [18]
In the early 2000s Whitfield-Gabrieli's team developed real-time fMRI (rt-fMRI) neurofeedback at Stanford University [19] and after moving to MIT (2005) her team further developed this system for Multivariate and Univariate Real-time Functional Imaging (MURFI). At Northeastern University,her team combined rt-fMRI neurofeedback with mindfulness meditation to create a transdiagnostic intervention to mitigate DMN connectivity and associated clinical symptoms and increase DMN anticorrelations for patients suffering from mental illness. [20]
Functional neuroimaging is the use of neuroimaging technology to measure an aspect of brain function,often with a view to understanding the relationship between activity in certain brain areas and specific mental functions. It is primarily used as a research tool in cognitive neuroscience,cognitive psychology,neuropsychology,and social neuroscience.
Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system,developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Increasingly it is also being used for quantitative studies of brain disease and psychiatric illness. Neuroimaging is a highly multidisciplinary research field and is not a medical specialty.
The posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) is the caudal part of the cingulate cortex,located posterior to the anterior cingulate cortex. This is the upper part of the "limbic lobe". The cingulate cortex is made up of an area around the midline of the brain. Surrounding areas include the retrosplenial cortex and the precuneus.
John Gabrieli is a neuroscientist at MIT,and an Investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. He is the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology,a faculty member in the department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and director of the Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center,part of the McGovern Institute. Gabrieli is an expert on the brain mechanisms of human cognition,including memory,thought and emotion. His work includes neuroimaging studies on healthy adults and children as well as clinical patients with many different brain disorders,including schizophrenia,depression,Alzheimer's disease,autism and dyslexia.
Dr. Christopher deCharms is a neuroscientist,author,and inventor. Currently,Dr. deCharms is the founder and CEO of Brainful,a life-sciences companies focused on neurotechnology,including technology based on imaging methods that allow people to watch the activation of their own brains 'live' using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
In neuroscience,the default mode network (DMN),also known as the default network,default state network,or anatomically the medial frontoparietal network (M-FPN),is a large-scale brain network primarily composed of the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex,posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus and angular gyrus. It is best known for being active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest,such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering. It can also be active during detailed thoughts related to external task performance. Other times that the DMN is active include when the individual is thinking about others,thinking about themselves,remembering the past,and planning for the future.
Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) is a brain connectivity analysis method for functional brain imaging data,mainly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). It estimates context-dependent changes in effective connectivity (coupling) between brain regions. Thus,PPI analysis identifies brain regions whose activity depends on an interaction between psychological context and physiological state of the seed region.
Resting state fMRI is a method of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that is used in brain mapping to evaluate regional interactions that occur in a resting or task-negative state,when an explicit task is not being performed. A number of resting-state brain networks have been identified,one of which is the default mode network. These brain networks are observed through changes in blood flow in the brain which creates what is referred to as a blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signal that can be measured using fMRI.
The biological basis of personality is the collection of brain systems and mechanisms that underlie human personality. Human neurobiology,especially as it relates to complex traits and behaviors,is not well understood,but research into the neuroanatomical and functional underpinnings of personality are an active field of research. Animal models of behavior,molecular biology,and brain imaging techniques have provided some insight into human personality,especially trait theories.
Dynamic functional connectivity (DFC) refers to the observed phenomenon that functional connectivity changes over a short time. Dynamic functional connectivity is a recent expansion on traditional functional connectivity analysis which typically assumes that functional networks are static in time. DFC is related to a variety of different neurological disorders,and has been suggested to be a more accurate representation of functional brain networks. The primary tool for analyzing DFC is fMRI,but DFC has also been observed with several other mediums. DFC is a recent development within the field of functional neuroimaging whose discovery was motivated by the observation of temporal variability in the rising field of steady state connectivity research.
CONN is a Matlab-based cross-platform imaging software for the computation,display,and analysis of functional connectivity in fMRI in the resting state and during task.
Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) is a framework for specifying models,fitting them to data and comparing their evidence using Bayesian model comparison. It uses nonlinear state-space models in continuous time,specified using stochastic or ordinary differential equations. DCM was initially developed for testing hypotheses about neural dynamics. In this setting,differential equations describe the interaction of neural populations,which directly or indirectly give rise to functional neuroimaging data e.g.,functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),magnetoencephalography (MEG) or electroencephalography (EEG). Parameters in these models quantify the directed influences or effective connectivity among neuronal populations,which are estimated from the data using Bayesian statistical methods.
Social cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the biological processes underpinning social cognition. Specifically,it uses the tools of neuroscience to study "the mental mechanisms that create,frame,regulate,and respond to our experience of the social world". Social cognitive neuroscience uses the epistemological foundations of cognitive neuroscience,and is closely related to social neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience employs human neuroimaging,typically using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct-current stimulation are also used. In nonhuman animals,direct electrophysiological recordings and electrical stimulation of single cells and neuronal populations are utilized for investigating lower-level social cognitive processes.
Network neuroscience is an approach to understanding the structure and function of the human brain through an approach of network science,through the paradigm of graph theory. A network is a connection of many brain regions that interact with each other to give rise to a particular function. Network Neuroscience is a broad field that studies the brain in an integrative way by recording,analyzing,and mapping the brain in various ways. The field studies the brain at multiple scales of analysis to ultimately explain brain systems,behavior,and dysfunction of behavior in psychiatric and neurological diseases. Network neuroscience provides an important theoretical base for understanding neurobiological systems at multiple scales of analysis.
Dimitri Van De Ville is a Swiss and Belgian computer scientist and neuroscientist specialized in dynamical and network aspects of brain activity. He is a professor of bioengineering at EPFL and the head of the Medical Image Processing Laboratory at EPFL's School of Engineering.
Michelle Hampson is an American neuroscientist who is an Associate Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at Yale University. She serves as director of real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Alfonso Nieto-Castanon is a Spanish computational neuroscientist and developer of computational neuroimaging analysis methods and tools. He is a visiting researcher at the Boston University College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences,and research affiliate at MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research. His research focuses on the understanding and characterization of human brain dynamics underlying mental function.
Functional MRI imaging methods have allowed researchers to combine neurocognitive testing with structural neuroanatomical measures,take into consideration both cognitive and affective paradigms,and subsequently create computer-aided diagnosis techniques and algorithms. Functional MRI has several benefits,such as its non-invasive quality,relatively high spatial resolution,and decent temporal resolution. One particular method used in recent research is resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging,rs-fMRI. fMRI imaging has been applied to numerous behavioral studies for schizophrenia,the findings of which have hinted toward potential brain regions that govern key characteristics in cognition and affect.
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