2023 Conference

Professor Walter Paulus started his career in neurology at the University Hospital for Neurology in Düsseldorf in 1979. In 1980 he spent 6 months at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. From 1982 he worked at the Alfried Krupp Hospital in Essen and then from 1984 at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. He was appointed as Professor and Chair and Clinical Director of the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany from 1992 to 2021. After retirement in Göttingen he continues at presentresearch at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Department of Neurology as a research professor with EU funded projects there.

His research focus involved development of new stimulation methods for induction of neuroplasticity such as tDCS, tACS and tRNS and many other aspects in non-invasive brain stimulation (researcher ID Web of Science: A-3544-2009, highly cited; “Walter Paulus” on Google scholar). His clinical oriented research focus encompasses epilepsy, restless legs syndrome, Parkinson’s disease and pain. Awards: Price for the best thesis of the University of Düsseldorf (1979); Hans Berger Preis of the DGKN (2016) and Pierre Gloor award of the ACNS (2022). From 2014 to 2018 he was chairman of the European and African Chapter of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology (IFCN) and from 2018 to 2022 President of the IFCN, at present serving as past president.

André Russowsky Brunoni, MD, PhD, MBA

• Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of São Paulo FMUSP;
• Psychiatrist graduated from USP in 2004;
• Residency in Internal Medicine (2005-2007);
• Psychiatry (2007-2010) by the Faculty of Medicine of USP;
• PhD in Behavioral Neurosciences from the Institute of Psychology at USP (2010-2012);
• Sandwich Doctorate at Harvard Medical School (2011-2012);
• Head of the Interventional Psychiatrist division of the Institute of Psychiatry.

Simon is a Professor at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging and School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow. He is the director of the Cognition and Oscillations Lab where he investigates the neural foundations of human cognition. His research focuses on rhythmic neural interactions (brain oscillations) with a focus on memory and attention. Simon studied Psychology at the University of Salzburg where he obtained his PhD in 2005 under supervision of Prof. Wolfgang Klimesch. He held a postdoc position (2006-2010) at the University of Regensburg (supervisor Prof. K.H. Bäuml), before joining the Zukunftskolleg in 2010 at the University of Konstanz as an independent PI funded by an Emmy Noether programme grant from the DFG. In 2013 Simon moved to the UK where he joined the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham as a Senior Lecturer, and was promoted to Reader in 2016. In 2020 Simon joined the University of Glasgow as a full Professor. 

Domenica is an assistant professor at the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham. She obtained a PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Brescia (Italy) working on how non-invasive brain stimulation can be combined with EEG. She then moved to Rome for a post-doctoral position at "Foundazione Santa Lucia" where she investigated the role of brain oscillations in cortical connectivity and plasticity within the motor system. From 2013 to 2019, she worked at the School of Psychology at the University of Glasgow. Here, she studied the role of brain oscillations in perception and top-down control within the visual system. Her main interests are the role of brain oscillations in both long-range cortical communication and local brain activity and the characterization of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation effects on cortical excitability and behavioural performance.

Keith Murphy is a research scientist at Stanford University and the technical co-founder and VP of innovation at Attune Neurosciences. Stemming from a background in building high throughput behavioral systems, he joined Stanford as a Kirschstein postdoctoral fellow to develop optical technologies for monitoring focused ultrasound effects on the deep brain of freely behaving animals. At Attune Neurosciences, he is building novel ultrasound systems and approaches for treating sleep and psychiatric disorders.

Dr McMackin undertook her PhD in Clinical Medicine at Trinity College Dublin, using EEG and TMS to study cortical network malfunction in motor neurone disease. She subsequently undertook postdoctoral work expanding this work to see if EEG and TMS-based measures can be used as motor neurone disease biomarkers. Dr McMackin is now an Assistant Professor in the Discipline of Physiology at Trinity College Dublin, where her team continue to research how we can sensitively, economically and non-invasively measure normal and impaired brain activity using electrophysiological methods. Roisin is particularly focussed on undertaking research which is clinically translatable, which can lead to more accurate detection, prediction and treatment of diseases.

Maria is a Lecturer in Cognition and Neuroscience at the University of Kent. She completed her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, investigating a multisensory integration perspective on cybersickness in Virtual Reality. Her research interests centre on understanding vestoular processing and multisensory conflicts, and she uses psychophysics, virtual reality, and vestibular stimulation to address her research questions.

Dr Lennart Verhagen is an Assistant Professor at the Donders Institute, Centre for Cognition, of the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

In his work he develops new non-invasive brain stimulation techniques to modulate neural circuits. Lennart is working on novel ultrasound neuromodulation techniques to alter brain areas with high precision, especially areas deep in the brain, such as the amygdala and caudate. He also extends more conventional approaches, for example using paired-associative TMS approaches to couple or uncouple specific cortical connections supporting decision making.

Daisy Thompson-Lake is an Assistant Professor and Addiction Research Neuroscientist at the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, West Virginia University. Her work focuses on using cutting-edge neuromodulation technologies to improve outcomes for patients with substance use disorder. She is involved with several clinical trials using techniques such as low-intensity focused ultrasound, deep brain stimulation, and transcranial magnetic stimulation to reduce cravings in opioid use disorder. Using multiple neuroimaging methods, she endeavors to enhance understanding of the functional and structural changes occurring after treatments and uncover the underlying mechanisms of neuromodulation on substance craving. 

Dr Jerome Sallet, INSERM

Danielle Kurtin recently completed her PhD at the University of Surrey investigating the context-dependent reconfigurations of functional connectivity and brain network dynamics in response to noninvasive brain stimulation and underpinning cognitive processes. As a postdoc at Imperial College London, her focus has shifted from healthy controls to populations with substance use disorder, and she’s added psychedelics to her neuromodulatory toolkit.

Lauren completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh in 2016, addressing how people make predictions when playing music together in comparison to conversing together, and has since held postdocs focusing on communication strategies and cognitive control. In 2018 she moved to Hearing Sciences - Scottish Section, an outpost of the University of Nottingham, to study conversation behaviour. She currently holds a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, in which she is investigating how hearing loss affects neurocognitive mechanisms underlying interaction, in order to find new ways to support people with hearing impairment.

Ingrid Odermatt is a fourth-year Neuroscience PhD student in the Neural Control of Movement Lab at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. She received a B. Sc. and M. Sc. in Psychology from the University of Bern, Switzerland.

In her current research, Ingrid uses fMRI and TMS to study the brain's ability to modulate the motor system without overt movement in TMS-based neurofeedback training. This TMS-based neurofeedback training aims to selectively increase corticomotor excitability for individual finger representations through motor imagery. Ingrid’s PhD project focuses on the effects of this training on the neural representations of the individual fingers in healthy participants. To investigate this, she uses fMRI to explore the neural activity patterns of imagined and executed finger movements and paired-pulse TMS protocols to gain insight into the intracortical processes that contribute to improved performance in the neurofeedback task. This project intends to provide the basis for a neurorehabilitation intervention that does not rely on overt movements and aims to improve fine motor functions e.g., after a stroke or spinal cord injury.

Samaneh is a Neuroscience PhD student at the University of Surrey, UK, under the supervision of Professor Roi Cohen Kadosh (Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience) and Dr Alireza Tamaddoni-Nezhad (Associate Professor in Machine Learning and Computational Intelligence). Since the start of their MS they have been working on the topics of system and quantitative neuroscience and working on multidisciplinary approaches for treatment of neurodegenerative and cognitive disorders. Samaneh's PhD project aims to develop a non-invasive and relatively safe neuromodulatingtechnique for improving language learning. In this project, they will examine how brain stimulation could enhance our language abilities. They will use a novel artificial intelligence (AI) approach to personalise these brain-based interventions that have been shown to improve other cognitive functions, in order to maximise their benefit on language abilities in healthy individuals. Samaneh believes their project will pave the way using psychological and neuroscientific knowledge, together with methods from AI, to improve language performance.

Luke is a doctoral student at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Professor Matthew Rushworth and Dr Nima Khalighinejad. His research concerns the neural mechanisms of decision-making, with a particular emphasis on the ascending neuromodulatory systems – an amalgam of nuclei in the brainstem and midbrain which release fundamental neuromodulatory chemicals. He uses a combination of quantitative modelling, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and transcranial ultrasound stimulation to address these questions in the brains of humans and non-human primates.

Karen Wendt received her MEng degree in Biomedical Engineering from Imperial College London, UK, in 2019. She is currently pursuing a D.Phil. degree in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford with a MRC industrial CASE studentship in partnership with Magstim Company Ltd, Wales. She is investigating and validating an enhanced transcranial magnetic stimulator with an extended parameter set under the supervision of Prof. Tim Denison and Prof. Jacinta O’Shea. Her research interests include the application of computational modelling to characterise the effect of brain stimulation on neurons and machine learning to find optimal stimulation parameters.

Alex is a Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia and the Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Sciences. He completed his PhD in Australia with A/Prof Jennifer Rodger where he investigated the cellular mechanisms of rTMS-induced plasticity using rodent models. For his first post-doc, he moved to Japan to investigate how oscillations in the resting membrane potential of neurons modulate neuronal spiking. Alex returned to Australia on a combined teaching a research position in late 2018, and in 2023, started an independent research group. A major focus of his group is to use animal and human brain tissue models to understand how non-invasive brain stimulation can be used to harness neural plasticity in the intact brain, and for the treatment of neurological conditions.