2024 Conference

Kim Butts-Pauly's lab studies novel therapies of focused ultrasound, a versatile technology with many applications. The lab uses image guidance to better plan, monitor, and evaluate treatment efficacy as well as to understand basic science mechanisms. By leveraging their own lab's scientific and engineering expertise and working in collaboration with other labs, their goal is to improve these focused ultrasound therapies as they become more commonly used in the clinic.

Miriam Klein-Flügge is an Associate Professor, Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Dale and UKRI-ERC fellow at the Departments of Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry and the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging at the University of Oxford. Her research group studies human cognitive processes, with a particular focus on motivation and decision making. She has extensive experience with neuroimaging and neuromodulation approaches. Her long-term vision is to conduct fundamental research that provides a platform for translation to psychiatric disease.

I obtained my PhD in in 2016 from Deakin University, where I used TMS to investigate brain activity during motor activity. I completed a post-doc at theBerenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation under Dr. Michael Fox and Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone. The overarching goal of my research is to use novel neuroimaging methods, such as ‘lesion network mapping’ (Corp et al., 2019, Brain; Corp et al., 2022, Neurology) to localise abnormal brain networks in neurological disorders, then try and translate these findings into targets for therapeutic TMS.

List of publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel-Corp-2

Professor Bradley Treeby is a Professor of Biomedical Ultrasound at University College London (UCL). His research sits at the interface between biomedical ultrasound, numerical methods, and human neuroscience. Prof. Treeby's work has two primary axes: (1) developing fast, accurate models of ultrasound wave propagation in the human body, and (2) developing ultrasound neurotech for precision neuromodulation in humans. He is known for creating k-Wave, an open-source acoustics toolbox for MATLAB. His work broadly explores therapeutic ultrasound applications in the brain, including targeted neuromodulation and treatment planning using deep learning.

Hannah is a Senior Lecturer at The University of Queensland and a principal investigator in the Queensland Attention and Control lab. Her research covers a range of themes, including: frontal lobe function, brain training, ageing, and attention. She uses a variety of research methods, namely brain stimulation (tDCS, tRNS, TMS), imaging techniques (MRI, MRS), pharmaceutical manipulations, cognitive paradigms, and psychophysics.

Daniel is a Senior Lecturer in Translational Neuroscience (Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol). Having completed a PhD in Neuroscience (University of Bristol) determining mechanisms of aberrant synaptic plasticity in Alzheimer’s disease pathology, Daniel went on to characterise cellular and molecular processes underlying synapse loss in the disease during a Post-Doctoral Research Associate position (Wellcome Trust/Medical Research Council Neurodegenerative Initiative Program). Daniel’s research now centres on understanding the molecular mechanisms that underpin neuromodulation by ultrasound, and how these effects can be leveraged for therapeutic benefit.

Dr. Denis Schwartz obtained his PhD in Biomedical Imaging & Signal Processing in 1998 and is a senior engineer at INSERM. He is the director of the MEG department of CERMEP and a researcher in the COPHY team of CRNL in Lyon. His field of expertise covers the acquisition and analysis of MEG/EEG signals, source reconstruction, time-frequency, and causality analyses. He contributed to the development of new approaches leading to improved modeling of deep, subcortical brain structures. He is currently coordinating the tests and evaluation of innovative MEG sensors (OPM) with applications in basic neuroscience and epilepsy diagnosis.

Ioana is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Neuroimaging working with Prof. Charlotte Stagg at the University of Oxford. Her postdoctoral research uses different types of non-invasive brain stimulation, like transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial ultrasound stimulation, to specifically target distinct brain circuits. She also uses multi-modal neuroimaging, including fMRI and MR spectroscopy, to explore the neurophysiological mechanisms of motor learning in healthy people and stroke survivors. During her doctoral studies, she conducted pharmacological studies using GABA agonists (baclofen, zolpidem), neuroimaging and TMS to investigate how increasing GABA-mediated inhibition affected motor learning in humans.

Catharina is a Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate in Electrophysiology with Prof. Charlotte Stagg at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the behavioural and neural mechanisms underlying complex motor (re-)learning. At the University College London, she focussed on biomarkers for spontaneous recovery in the acute stage post-stroke and therapy-induced recovery in the chronic stage post-stroke.

Soha Farboud is a Ph.D. student specializing in cognitive neuromodulation. With a background in medical neurobiology, she is currently working with Dr. Hanneke den Ouden and Dr. Lennart Verhagen. Her work focuses on understanding the effects of Transcranial Ultrasonic Stimulation (TUS) in humans, particularly in choice and decision-making paradigms. In her talk, she will discuss how TUS can be better explored using well-mapped brain circuits. By stimulating the frontal eye fields, TUS can bias eye movements and shed light on the interaction of TUS with the brain and behaviour.

Marcus Kaiser is leader of Neuroinformatics UK and Chair of the Neuroinformatics Special Interest Group of the British Neuroscience Association. After studying biology and computer science, he obtained his PhD from Jacobs University Bremen in 2005. In 2016, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. He is on the editorial boards of Network Neuroscience and PLOS Computational Biology, and author of the recent book ‘Changing Connectomes’ (MIT Press, 2020). Research interests are understanding the link between brain structure and function in order to inform non-invasive brain stimulation interventions for mental health (see https://www.dynamic-connectome.org/ ).

Kevin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina, USA. His research focuses on emerging noninvasive brain stimulation technologies, including transcranial focused ultrasound, and developing methods of personalizing stimulation with the goal of improving therapeutic outcomes.

Christina is the director of research at Magnetic Tides, a biotech startup that was founded by UC Berkeley neuroscientists and physicists to develop and commercialize a novel method of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS). Before joining Magnetic Tides, Christina completed her PhD from UC Berkeley and a postdoctoral fellowship at UC San Francisco. She is now working with an interdisciplinary team to test the efficacy of a novel NIBS method, kilohertz transcranial magnetic perturbation (kTMP), a magnetic induction method that can deliver continuous kilohertz cortical fields at relatively large amplitudes. These kHz signals can be amplitude-modulated to provide perturbation at frequencies corresponding to endogenous neural rhythms(e.g., alpha, beta). Given the unique combination of relatively large amplitude subthreshold E-fields and ability to target specific frequency bands, Christina and the team at Magnetic Tides hope that kTMP can provide a new NIBS tool for basic and translational research.

Paolo is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Psychology, University of Essex. He completed his PhD in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Bologna (Italy). His research activity is mainly characterized by the combination of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) protocols with behavioral paradigm and neurophysiological measures, such as electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG) and electrocardiogram (ECG). His investigations entail the study of cortical visual system connectivity, perceptual decision-making,  motor networks excitability and viscero-neuronal coupling in humans.

Mrs. Nomiki Koutsoumpari holds a Bachelor's degree in Linguistics from the University of the Aegean, Greece, and two Master's degrees: one in Language Technology from the University of Athens, Greece, and another in Experimental and Clinical Linguistics from the University of Potsdam, Germany. Since April 2020, she has been working as a Teaching and Research Associate at the University of Plymouth. Her PhD research focuses on the neuroscience of response inhibition, examining the underlying mechanisms, contexts, and susceptibility factors using neuroimaging tools like fMRI and Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation (TUS). Her current study investigates the roles of the anterior insula (AI) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) in motivational learning biases related to rewards and punishments, aiming to understand their distinct contributions through the precise modulation capabilities of TUS. Beyond academia, Nomiki has diverse experience in managerial roles, lab assistance, teaching, and quality assurance.

Dr. Buchanan is a senior postdoctoral fellow in Psychiatry at the Stanford Brain Stimulation Lab, Stanford School of Medicine. Dr. Buchanan is leading a Phase III multisite NIMH R01 Funded clinical trial under the supervision of Dr. Nolan Williams and Dr. Conor Liston (site PI at Weill Cornell Medicine). Dr. Buchanan’s trial is using fMRI BioType guided iTBS for MDD (N=348). Dr. Buchanan helps manage BSL operations and provides oversight to several ongoing clinical trials and publications. Dr. Buchanan’s primary research goal is to use neuroimaging to inform and enhance the efficacy of brain stimulation, and to help labs and clinics scale their capacity to offer neuromodulation. Dr. Buchanan has conducted/overseen thousands of TMS sessions, brain scans, and psychological assessments. Dr. Buchanan has also taught nearly 1000 students as an instructor of Clinical Neuroscience and Neuropsychiatry courses.

Catriona Scrivener is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh, investigating the role of visual field maps and retinotopic organisation in complex visual processing. She obtained a PhD at the University of Reading, where she used concurrent EEG-fMRI to investigate change detection and graded visual awareness. Dr Scrivener then moved to the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, to work with concurrent TMS-fMRI. There she focused on the the top-down role of the intraparietal sulcus on driving brain-wide focus on task-relevant information. She is primarily interested in the neural mechanisms that determine which stimuli from our environment reach our awareness, and the role of communication between brain areas to support this process. Catriona uses multimodal neuroimaging methods to both record and perturb brain activity, and to investigate how this activity relates to our behaviour.

Benjamin’s research focuses on the oscillatory underpinnings of human memory. His PhD (University of Birmingham, UK) investigated how multiple forms of neural oscillation interacted to help create and recall episodic memories. During a postdoctoral position at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany), he then examined how similar electrophysiological interactions support visual perception and self-referential navigation. He is now at the Centre for Human Brain Health (University of Birmingham, UK), where his research focuses on how we can perturb gamma oscillations to augment episodic memory.