School of Medicine
Showing 11-20 of 4,514 Results
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Elias Aboujaoude, MD, MA
Clinical Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
BioDr. Aboujaoude is a Clinical Professor, researcher and writer at Stanford University's Department of Psychiatry, where he is Chief of the Anxiety Disorders Section and Director of the OCD Clinic and the Impulse Control Disorders Clinic. Besides the compulsivity-impulsivity spectrum, his work has focused on the intersection of technology and psychology, with an emphasis on the problematic use of Internet-related technologies, mental health in a post-privacy world, and the potential for telemedicine interventions such as virtual reality and video-based therapy to increase access to care and advance global health. His books include "Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the e-Personality" and "Mental Heath in the Digital Age: Grave Dangers, Great Promise". Dr. Aboujaoude also teaches psychology on the main Stanford campus and at UC Berkeley. Scholarly and media platforms that have featured his work include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Congressional Quarterly, The Harvard Business Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, BBC, PBS, and CNN.
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Daniel A. Abrams
Clinical Associate 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. -
Geoffrey Abrams, MD
Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Abrams' research is focused on elucidating the pathobiology behind tendinoapthy and developing new treatment modalities for the disease. Specifically, his team is studying the role of micro-RNA as it relates to chronic inflammation and stem cell differentiation in the development and perpetuation of chronic tendinopathy.
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Marwa Abu El Haija
Clinical Assistant Professor, Pediatrics - Gastroenterology
BioI am a pediatric gastroenterologist with clinical and research interest in childhood obesity. I believe that each patient is unique in their disease and background, that is why they deserve to be approached in an individualized way. I aspire to discover what's unknown about the pathophysiologic causes of obesity, and the mechanisms of which treatments work. My clinical and research interests in pediatric obesity found home within Stanford's distinctive position academically, medically and geographically.
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Monther Abu-Remaileh
Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and of Genetics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe study the role of the lysosome in metabolic adaptation using subcellular omics approaches, functional genomics and innovative biochemical tools. We apply this knowledge to understand how lysosomal dysfunction leads to human diseases including neurodegeneration, cancer and metabolic syndrome.
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Janelle Aby
Clinical Professor, Pediatrics - General Pediatrics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy interest is in the care and evaluation of newborns. In particular, I have been focusing on improving the educational experience for our residents and students in the nursery regarding the examination and management of term or near-term infants.
