School of Medicine
Showing 1-95 of 95 Results
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Daniel Arthur Abrams
Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAutism spectrum disorders (ASD) are among the most pervasive neurodevelopmental disorders and are characterized by significant deficits in social communication. A common observation in children with ASD is that affected individuals often “tune out” from social interactions, which likely impacts the development of social, communication, and language skills. My primary research goals are to understand why children with ASD often tune out from the social world and how this impacts social skill and brain development, and to identify remediation strategies that motivate children with ASD to engage in social interactions. The theoretical framework that guides my work is that social impairments in ASD stem from a primary deficit in identifying social stimuli, such as human voices and faces, as rewarding and salient stimuli, thereby precluding children with ASD from engaging with these stimuli.
My program of research has provided important information regarding the brain circuits underlying social deficits in ASD. Importantly, these findings have consistently implicated key structures of the brain’s reward and salience processing systems, and support the hypothesis that impaired reward attribution to social stimuli is a critical aspect of social difficulties in ASD. The first study produced by this program of research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and showed that children with ASD have weak brain connectivity between voice processing regions of cortex and the distributed reward circuit and amygdala. Moreover, the strength of these speech-reward brain connections predicted social communication abilities in these children. A second study, which was recently published in eLife, examined neural processing of mother’s voice, a biologically salient and implicitly rewarding sound which is associated with cognitive and social development, in children with ASD. Results from this study identified a relationship between social communication abilities in children with ASD and brain activation in reward and salience processing regions during mother’s voice processing. A third study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that mother’s voice activates an extended voice processing network, including reward and salience processing regions, in typically developing children. Moreover, the strength of brain connectivity between voice-selective and reward and salience processing regions predicted social communication abilities in these neurotypical children. Together, results provide novel support for the hypothesis that deficits in representing the reward value of social stimuli, including the human voice, impede children with ASD from actively engaging with these stimuli and consequently impair social skill development.
My future research will leverage these findings by examining several important questions related to social information processing in children with ASD. First, we aim to study longitudinal development of social brain circuitry in minimally verbal children with ASD, a severely affected subpopulation that has been vastly underrepresented in the ASD literature. Second, we aim to examine the efficacy of naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions, such as Pivotal Response Treatment, for children with ASD and their relation to changes in social brain and reward circuitry. Third, we aim to examine distinct neural profiles in female children with ASD who, on average, have better social communication abilities compared to their male counterparts. -
Ehsan Adeli
Instructor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research lies in the intersection of Machine Learning, Computer Vision and Medical Imaging.
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Naoyuki Asada
Affiliate, Psych/Major Laboratories and Clinical & Translational Neurosciences Incubator
BioEducation:
- Bachelor of Science, University of Tokyo (2007)
- Master of Science, University of Tokyo (2009)
- Doctor of Philosophy, University of Tokyo (2012)
Professional Experience:
- Pharmacological Researcher, Daiichi-Sankyo Co., Ltd. (2012-present) -
Daniel Bowling
Instructor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
BioI am a neuroscientist focused on auditory-vocal function in human social communication. My expertise covers psychological, neurobiological, and acoustic perspectives on speech and music, their conveyance of affect, social-significance, and origins in mammalian vocal behavior. I combine psychophysiological, psychoacoustic, neuroendocrine and pharmacological methods to study perception and behavior in human subjects. I graduated from the University of California San Diego in 2006 with summa cum laude honors in Biological Psychology (BS) and Neurophilosophy (BA). I hold a graduate certificate in Cognitive Neuroscience from Duke University (2009), and a PhD in Neurobiology from Duke University School of Medicine (2012). My postdoc at the University of Vienna (2012-18) focused on bioacoustics and auditory-motor synchrony. My work has been recognized with awards including a young investigator award from the University of Vienna and an innovation award from the Social and Affective Neuroscience society. At Stanford, I am working to develop an objective assessment of auditory-vocal affect perception for clinical research on autism in collaboration with scientists, engineers, and artists from departments of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Music. My work is funded by NIMH and the Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute. Along the way, I have been fortunate to receive mentorship from Drs. Patricia Churchland, Dale Purves, Tecumseh Fitch, and Karen Parker.
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Victor Carrion
John A. Turner Endowed Professor for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsExamines the interplay between brain development and stress vulnerability via a multi-method approach that includes psychophysiology, neuroimaging, neuroendocrinology and phenomenology. Treatment development that focuses on individual and community-based interventions for stress related conditions in children and adolescents that experience traumatic stress.
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Dan Christoffel
Basic Life Res Scientist, Psych/Major Laboratories and Clinical & Translational Neurosciences Incubator
BioOur experiences come to shape our future behaviors and can having lasting effects on our quality of life. My research aims to understand how chronic exposure to particular stimuli (i.e. stress, food, drugs) alters the functioning of specific neural circuits. Following identification of the relevant circuits, I investigate the mechanisms that regulate these experience-dependent changes. This ultimately aids in our understanding of how maladaptive changes in brain function occur and how these changes result in psychiatric disorders.
My current focus is on specific neural circuits involved in reward processing and feeding behavior. I am discovering how various excitatory inputs to the nucleus accumbens, a critical brain node involved in processing the salience of events, modulate reward - related behaviors utilizing converging lines of inquiry. Specifically, I observe neuronal activity in awake behaving mice, and assess the mechanisms underlying changes in activity with electrophysiology. Finally, I then modulate specific circuits using optogenetics, a technique that provides spatio-temporal control over genetically identified cells, to determine the causal role of these circuits in reward-related behavior. -
Luis de Lecea
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Major Laboratories and Clinical and Translational Neurosciences Incubator)
On Leave from 03/09/2020 To 10/18/2020Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy lab uses molecular, optogenetic, anatomical and behavioral methods to identify and manipulate the neuronal circuits underlying brain arousal, with particular attention to sleep and wakefulness transitions. We are also interested in the changes that occur in neuronal circuits in conditions of hyperarousal such as stress and drug addiction.
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Laramie Duncan
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Major Laboratories and Clinical Translational Neurosciences Incubator)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe study genetic and environmental effects on mental health. Much of our work is computational and it relies upon genetic data, collected from millions of individuals, from around the world. We use genetic approaches because the overall goal of the lab is to discover fundamental information about psychiatric disorders, and ultimately to build more rational approaches to classification, prevention, and treatment.
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Flint Espil
Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
BioDr. Flint Espil researches the etiology and treatment of tic disorders (including Tourette’s), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and body-focused repetitive behaviors. He is interested in how psychosocial factors, the environment, and underlying brain circuitry influence treatment outcomes among individuals seeking treatment. Dr. Espil is currently collaborating with the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research and the Brain Stimulation Lab to explore novel imaging techniques (e.g., functional near-infrared spectroscopy) and neuromodulation approaches (e.g., transcranial magnetic stimulation, deep brain stimulation) to improve our understanding of these disorders. He is also exploring ways to adapt and implement evidence-based mental health approaches in community settings. He is currently collaborating with community-based organizations in East Palo Alto to improve access to care for youth in school settings.
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Amit Etkin, MD, PhD
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Major Laboratories and Clinical Translational Neurosciences Incubator)
On Leave from 11/01/2019 To 10/31/2020Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe overarching aim of the Etkin lab is to understand the neural basis of emotional disorders and their treatment, and to leverage this knowledge to develop novel treatment interventions. Our work is organized around the study of the neuroscience of emotion and cognitive regulation, as well as neural circuit function, in healthy subjects and individuals with a range of psychiatric disorders.
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Laura Michele Hack
Clinical Instructor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, PsychiatryBioDr. Laura Hack is a Postdoctoral Fellow and Clinical Instructor under the mentorship of Drs. Leanne Williams, Alan Schatzberg, and Ruth O’Hara. She is a translational clinician with a research passion for integrating multiple types of biological and environmental data using advanced analytic techniques into a neuroscience-based taxonomy of mood, anxiety, and stressor-related disorders. Laura envisions herself as a ‘psychiatrist of the future,’ incorporating genetic information, brain imaging, blood-based markers, and data from wearable sensors into diagnostic and treatment decisions to help relieve the suffering that arises from our current trial-and-error approach.
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Douglas F. Levinson, M.D.
Walter E. Nichols, M.D. Professor in the School of Medicine, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Levinson directs the Program on the Genetics of Brain Function in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. The program investigates the genetic basis of psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia and major depressive disorder), using genetic association, linkage and resequencing methodologies. In collaboration with Dr. Alice Whittemore, we are also actively engaged in statistical methods testing and development for genetic research.
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Liang Ma
Basic Life Research Scientist, Psych/Major Laboratories and Clinical & Translational Neurosciences Incubator
BioDr. Liang Ma is a Research Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford University Schools of Medicine. He completed his Ph.D. degree in Human Genetics at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2014). He completed postdoctoral research fellowships in genetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and UTHealth.
During his graduate program, he studied potential genomic variants that contribute to schizophrenia risk by evaluating the two largest Han GWAS (Ma et al. 2013 Mol Psychiatry), CREB1 signal pathway (Ma et al. 2014 J Psychiatr Res), and mitochondria component NDUFS7 (Ma et al. 2013 Psychiatr Genet). During his fellowship, he studied which schizophrenia-related genomic variations, open chromatin regions, and DNA methylation sites are interacting with each other to influencing gene expression and splicing (Ma et al. 2019 Mol Psychiatry) (Ma et al. 2020 Mol Psychiatry). He has pioneered the analysis of human polygenic diseases that dissect gene structure and link the expression features to disease risk.
His research interest focuses on identifying risk genomic variations, genes, and in particular, splicing transcripts for human polygenic diseases; and investigate how genomic variations affect gene transcriptions and further contribute to diseases’ risk. He specialized in genomics studies (genome-wide association study (GWAS), studies of RNA-seq, ChIP-seq and DNA methylation in combination with whole-genome sequencing (WGS)), and functional studies by employing molecular biology and cell biology approach. He established methods to discover risk splicing expression features and experimentally validate them. Using omics data and the methods he developed, he has identified a list of genes that potentially increase the risk of schizophrenia. -
Robert Malenka
Nancy Friend Pritzker Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
On Leave from 10/01/2019 To 08/31/2020Current Research and Scholarly InterestsLong-lasting changes in synaptic strength are important for the modification of neural circuits by experience. A major goal of my laboratory is to elucidate the molecular events that trigger various forms of synaptic plasticity and the modifications in synaptic proteins that are responsible for the changes in synaptic efficacy.
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Ryan Matlow
Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
BioRyan Matlow, Ph.D., is a child clinical psychologist who serves as Director of Community Research Programs for Stanford’s Early Life Stress and Pediatric Anxiety Program. His clinical and research efforts focus on understanding and addressing the impact of stress, adversity, and trauma in children, families, and communities. In particular, Dr. Matlow seeks to apply current scientific knowledge of the neurobiological and developmental impact of stress and trauma in shaping interventions and systems of care. Dr. Matlow is focused on engaging diverse populations and providing evidence-based individual, family, and systems interventions for posttraumatic stress following interpersonal trauma. For example, he provides training to promote dissemination of Cue Centered Therapy (Carrion, 2015), a flexible, manualized intervention addressing childhood experiences of chronic trauma. Dr. Matlow seeks to develop authentic partnerships to inform program development and trauma-sensitive service delivery in community and school settings.
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Vinod Menon
Rachael L. and Walter F. Nichols, MD, Professor and Professor, by courtesy, of Neurology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEXPERIMENTAL, CLINICAL AND THEORETICAL SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE
Cognitive neuroscience; Systems neuroscience; Cognitive development; Psychiatric neuroscience; Functional brain imaging; Dynamical basis of brain function; Nonlinear dynamics of neural systems. -
Pablo Paredes Castro
Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Instructor, Psychiatry and Behavioral SciencesCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsPRECISE, PERSONALIZED & AFFORDABLE WELLBEING TECHNOLOGY
Combining medicine, design, and engineering principles, we research novel technologies to keep people healthy and productive. Our goal is to discover revolutionary ways of broadly delivering both universal and selective, preventive, and self-sustaining, daily life interventions. -
Karen J. Parker, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Major Laboratories and Clinical Translational Neurosciences Incubator)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe Parker Lab conducts research on the biology of social functioning in monkeys, typically developing humans, and patients with social impairments.
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Kilian M Pohl
Associate Professor (Research) of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Public Mental Health and Population Sciences)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe foundation of the laboratory of Associate Professor Kilian M. Pohl, PhD, is computational science aimed at identifying biomedical phenotypes improving the mechanistic understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. The biomedical phenotypes are discovered by unbiased, machine learning-based searches across biological, neuroimaging, and neuropsychological data. This data-driven discovery currently supports the adolescent brain research of the NIH-funded National Consortium on Alcohol and NeuroDevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) and the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD), the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the US. The laboratory also investigates brain patterns specific to alcohol use disorder and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) across the adult age range, and have advanced the understanding of a variety of brain diseases including schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, glioma, and aging.
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Michael Schneider
Adjunct Professor, Psych/Major Laboratories and Clinical & Translational Neurosciences Incubator
BioBret Schneider specializes in brain neuromodulation technologies for interventional psychiatry, neurology and regenerative medicine. He has designed, built and tested more than one hundred medical instruments, from computerized surgical navigation systems to implantable devices and biologics. As a technology company leader, he has founded and built several start-ups, including venture-capital-backed Cervel Neurotech Inc. Bret earned a BA cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis, an MD degree from Rush University in Chicago, and graduated a clinical residency in Psychiatry at UCLA. He subsequently completed a post-doctoral fellowship in neurosurgical stereotactic radiosurgery and a post-doctoral fellowship in Advanced Psychiatry, both at Stanford University. Presently, he is Chief Medical Officer for Zap Surgical Systems, Inc., where he is developing stereotactic radiosurgery as a method for precise, non-destructive, non-invasive modulation of dysfunctional brain circuits. Bret is also Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosurgery at Stanford University. He maintains a clinical medical practice focused on repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS).
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Nirao Shah
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Major Laboratories and Clinical Translational Neurosciences Incubator) and of Neurobiology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe study how our brains generate social interactions that differ between the sexes. Such gender differences in behavior are regulated by sex hormones, experience, and social cues. Accordingly, we are characterizing how these internal and external factors control gene expression and neuronal physiology in the two sexes to generate behavior. We are also interested in understanding how such sex differences in the healthy brain translate to sex differences in many neuro-psychiatric illnesses.
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David Spiegel
Jack, Samuel and Lulu Willson Professor in Medicine
On Partial Leave from 01/01/2020 To 12/10/2021Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Spiegel's research program involves mind/body interactions, including cancer progression, the response to traumatic stress, and the effect of hypnosis on the perception of pain and anxiety.
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Edith Vioni Sullivan
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Major Laboratories and Clinical Translational Neurosciences Incubator)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsApplication of neuroimaging modalities and component process analysis of cognitive, sensory, and motor functions to identify brain structural and functional mechanisms disrupted in diseases affecting the brain: alcoholism, HIV infection, dementia, and normal aging from adolescence to senescence.
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Hui Qi Tong
Clinical Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
BioStaff Psychologist: Women's Mental Health Program, San Francisco VA Health Care System (2009-2016)
Academic visitor: Oxford Mindfulness Center, Department of Psychiatry, Oxford University (2016)
Psychology Post-doctoral Fellowship: UCSF，San Francisco VA Health Care System (2009)
Psychology Pre-doctoral Internship: UCSF, San Francisco VA Health Care System (2008)
Psychology Education: Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, Palo Alto University (2008)
Clinical Research Associate: Department of Psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine (2000-2001)
Research Fellow: Genetics Division, Department of Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital,Harvard Medical School (1999-2000)
Medical Education: Fudan University, Shanghai Medical College, Shanghai, China (1994) -
Alexander Eckehart Urban
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Major Laboratories and Clinical Translational Neurosciences Incubator) and of Genetics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsComplex behavioral and neuropsychiatric phenotypes often have a strong genetic component. This genetic component is often extremely complex and difficult to dissect. The current revolution in genome technology means that we can avail ourselves to tools that make it possible for the first time to begin understanding the complex genetic and epigenetic interactions at the basis of the human mind.
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Pablo Villoslada
Adjunct Professor, Psych/Major Laboratories and Clinical & Translational Neurosciences Incubator
BioPablo Villoslada received his MD at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in 1990. He completed the speciality in neurology in 1995 at the Hospital Vall d’Hebron (Spain) and the PhD in Neuroimmunology in 1996 at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). He moved to the University of California, San Francisco (US) as a postdoctoral fellow returning to Barcelona in 1998 and he worked as Assistant Professor of the University of Navarra from 2001 to 2008. He became Group leader of the Neuroimmunology group of the Institute of Biomedical Research August Pi Sunyer (IDIBAPS) – Hospital Clinic - University of Barcelona, Spain, in 2009. From 2014 to 2017 he became Adjunct Professor at the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. From 2017 to 2018 he worked a Medical Director of Neuroinflammation at Genentech. Since October 2018 is adjunct professor at Stanford University. He is a serial entrepreneur, having founded Health Engineering (imaging software) and Bionure (drug development CNS), and being venture partner with Alta Life Sciences and Spire Bioventure. He joined the neurosciences team at Stanford University in October 2018.
Pablo Villoslada has been active in the Neurosciences and brain diseases research for more than 20 years contributing to the application of systems biology to neurological diseases, development of new therapies or biomarkers for Multiple Sclerosis and neurodegenerative diseases, and developing new neuroimaging technologies for monitoring brain diseases. He has published more than 170 scientific articles in journals in the field of neurology and has been granted 9 patents in biomarkers and new therapies for brain diseases. He has also obtained 5 EU grants and several others from international foundations. -
Jessica Walsh
Basic Life Research Scientist, Psych/Major Laboratories and Clinical & Translational Neurosciences Incubator
BioMy career in neuroscience spans 17 years of work in diverse areas of the mental health field. There is a clear trajectory of my commitment to investigating mental health disorders seen from the various positions have that led to my current stage. My training has endowed me with a strong skill set for interrogating neurobiological systems. In addition, conducting research in numerous distinct settings has left me with a well-developed scientific philosophy, and a nuanced understanding of different mental health disorders, ranging from Alzheimer’s disease, to Depression, to Autism Spectrum Disorder, all of which are complex brain disorders with severe public health implications.
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Leanne Williams
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Major Laboratories and Clinical Translational Neurosciences Incubator) and, by courtesy, of Psychology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsA revolution is under way in psychiatry. We can now understand mental illness as an expression of underlying brain circuit disruptions, shaped by experience and genetics. Our lab is defining precision brain circuit types for depression, anxiety and attention deficit. We apply computational models to large amounts of brain imaging, behavior and other data. These precision brain types inform our translational intervention studies. To close the loop, field ready insights are applied in practice.
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Qingyu Zhao
Research Scientist, Psych/Major Laboratories and Clinical & Translational Neurosciences Incubator
BioI am generally interested in using image analysis techniques to improve detection, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. My research interests particularly lie in the areas of non-linear statistics and machine learning applied to translational neuroscience.
