The past several decades have witnessed remarkable progress on elucidating the disease mechanisms of the aging brain. Imaging technologies have allowed scientists to map neural network dynamics in exquisite detail, with noteworthy consequences for medicine and society. In our laboratory, we leverage neuroimaging and electrophysiology to study neurovascular injury, trauma-induced neural plasticity and atypical neurodegeneration. We integrate brain mapping techniques with machine intelligence and computational biology approaches to investigate how brain connectivity alterations caused by the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier add to the neurocognitive deficits of aging adults with traumatic brain injury, cerebral amyloid angiopathy or dementia. We are interested in how vascular disease affects brain aging trajectories, and in the relationship between brain trauma and neurodegenerative diseases. Our extensive experience with the bioinformatics and quantitative analysis of neuroimaging data has allowed us to pioneer award-winning approaches for the analysis and visualization of brain connectivity. The laboratory has made important discoveries on the reorganization and plasticity of neural connections after brain trauma, and has obtained unique insights into the relationship between neural injury, brain plasticity and neurodegenerative disease. Many of these results have been popularized by science magazines with international circulation and have been described in neuroscience textbooks.
|