Feindel Virtual Brain and Mind Lecture Series: Cross-spectral neural pathology in patients with neurodegenerative disorders
Alex Wiesman presents: Cross-spectral neural pathology in patients with neurodegenerative disorders.
Registration available here.
Speaker: Alex Wiesman, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow, The Neuro, Canada
Abstract: In patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders, changes in spectro-spatial patterns of neural activity predict key cognitive and clinical outcomes. While such approaches hold promise as biomarkers and for guiding frequency-targeted neuromodulation therapies, current analyses typically focus on canonical frequency bands in isolation, and neglect potentially meaningful cross-spectral effects. Using magnetoencephalography in patients with Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, we have developed new cross-spectral metrics of functional neural pathology that predict hallmarks of each disease. These metrics outperform simpler estimates of spectral power, and can enhance our identification and interpretation of functional neuronal pathology in neurodegenerative disorders and beyond.
Bio: Alex completed his undergraduate education at the University of Nebraska - Omaha, where he conducted photoreceptor electrophysiology research with Wallace Thoreson. He then obtained his PhD under the supervision of Tony Wilson at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where he led an NIH-funded multimodal imaging study of neural oscillatory changes in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Alex is now a postdoctoral scholar in Sylvain Baillet's lab at the Montreal Neurological Institute, where he is extending his previous work on cross-spectral markers of functional neural pathology into patients with Parkinson's disease.
The Feindel Virtual Brain and Mind (VBM) Seminar Series will advance the vision of Dr. William Feindel (1918–2014), Former Director of the Neuro (1972–1984), to constantly bridge the clinical and research realms. The talks will highlight the latest advances and discoveries in neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and neuroimaging.
Speakers will include scientists from across The Neuro, as well as colleagues and collaborators locally and from around the world. The series is intended to provide a virtual forum for scientists and trainees to continue to foster interdisciplinary exchanges on the mechanisms, diagnosis and treatment of brain and cognitive disorders.
