Bio

Charlotte is a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Professor Luis de Lecea. Her research interests include the brain phenomena underpinning non-invasive neuromodulation such as focused ultrasound and electrical brain stimulation, and in the de Lecea lab she studies this with relation to sleep and addiction. Charlotte completed her PhD in the Interventional Systems Neuroscience lab of Dr Nir Grossman at Imperial College London. Her PhD research focused on uncovering the biophysical mechanism of temporal interference (TI) brain stimulation, primarily using electrophysiology and computational modelling. During her PhD, Charlotte spent a year as a visiting PhD student in Professor Ed Boyden’s lab at MIT, where she was trained in automated in-vivo patch clamp. Previously, Charlotte completed a BSc in Biomedical Science at King’s College London, and an MRes in Experimental Neuroscience at Imperial College London.

Honors & Awards

  • Dean's Fellowship, Stanford University, School of Medicine (06/23-06/24)

Professional Education

  • BSc, King's College London, Biomedical Science (2014)
  • MRes, Imperial College London, Experimental Neuroscience (2017)
  • PhD, Imperial College London, Clinical Medicine Research (Brain Sciences) (2022)

Stanford Advisors

Contact

  • Academic
    cluff@stanford.edu
    University - Scholar Department: Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Position: Postdoctoral Scholar

Additional Info

  • Mail Code: 5717

Lab Affiliations

All Publications

  • Can Neuromodulation Improve Sleep and Psychiatric Symptoms? Current psychiatry reports Luff, C. E., de Lecea, L. 2024

    Abstract

    In this review, we evaluate recent studies that employ neuromodulation, in the form of non-invasive brain stimulation, to improve sleep in both healthy participants, and patients with psychiatric disorders. We review studies using transcranial electrical stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and closed-loop auditory stimulation, and consider both subjective and objective measures of sleep improvement.Neuromodulation can alter neuronal activity underlying sleep. However, few studies utilizing neuromodulation report improvements in objective measures of sleep. Enhancements in subjective measures of sleep quality are replicable, however, many studies conducted in this field suffer from methodological limitations, and the placebo effect is robust. Currently, evidence that neuromodulation can effectively enhance sleep is lacking. For the field to advance, methodological issues must be resolved, and the full range of objective measures of sleep architecture, alongside subjective measures of sleep quality, must be reported. Additionally, validation of effective modulation of neuronal activity should be done with neuroimaging.

    View details for DOI 10.1007/s11920-024-01540-1

    View details for PubMedID 39352645

    View details for PubMedCentralID 1991337

  • Optimized ultrasound neuromodulation for non-invasive control of behavior and physiology. Neuron Murphy, K. R., Farrell, J. S., Bendig, J., Mitra, A., Luff, C., Stelzer, I. A., Yamaguchi, H., Angelakos, C. C., Choi, M., Bian, W., DiIanni, T., Pujol, E. M., Matosevich, N., Airan, R., Gaudillière, B., Konofagou, E. E., Butts-Pauly, K., Soltesz, I., de Lecea, L. 2024

    Abstract

    Focused ultrasound can non-invasively modulate neural activity, but whether effective stimulation parameters generalize across brain regions and cell types remains unknown. We used focused ultrasound coupled with fiber photometry to identify optimal neuromodulation parameters for four different arousal centers of the brain in an effort to yield overt changes in behavior. Applying coordinate descent, we found that optimal parameters for excitation or inhibition are highly distinct, the effects of which are generally conserved across brain regions and cell types. Optimized stimulations induced clear, target-specific behavioral effects, whereas non-optimized protocols of equivalent energy resulted in substantially less or no change in behavior. These outcomes were independent of auditory confounds and, contrary to expectation, accompanied by a cyclooxygenase-dependent and prolonged reduction in local blood flow and temperature with brain-region-specific scaling. These findings demonstrate that carefully tuned and targeted ultrasound can exhibit powerful effects on complex behavior and physiology.

    View details for DOI 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.07.002

    View details for PubMedID 39079529