Director
Mark D’Esposito, MD
Professor of Neuroscience & Psychology
Dr. Mark D’Esposito is Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology, and former Director of the Henry H. Wheeler, Jr. Brain Imaging Center. He is also an attending neurologist at the Northern California VA Health Care System and Adjunct Professor of Neurology at UCSF. Dr. D’Esposito’s lab investigates the neurophysiological and neurochemical mechanisms underlying cognition, how the brain recovers from injury and potential treatments for the injured brain. His lab has developed and implemented a wide range of approaches and methods to study brain function including functional MRI, transcranial magnetic stimulation, electrocorticography, pharmacological interventions and behavioral studies of patients with neurological disorders.
Scientific Director
Ben Inglis, PhD
BIC Manager
I am interested in using magnetic resonance and other non-invasive methods to study physiology and biochemistry of the brain. As principal physicist in the Brain Imaging Center, I provide support to all neuroscience research on a Siemens 3 T MRI scanner. At Wheeler LABS, I aim to foster a collaborative environment that allows basic scientists and clinicians to work on shared goals. Our project-oriented (ad hoc) teams are driven to provide new tools in medicine or to improve existing tools, and to deploy them in the most efficient way possible, whether through blogs, peer-reviewed publications, patents or startup companies.
Core Scientists
Daniel Sheltraw, MD, PhD
R&D Engineer
My main interest is the non-invasive stimulation of the brain by magnetic induction. A time varying magnetic field, produced by a coil placed on the head, induces an electric field within the brain which couples to neurons and potentially affects their short and long term behavior. Magnetic induction has the distinct advantage, compared to scalp electrode methods, of producing much larger electric field amplitudes in the brain for similar electric field amplitudes in the scalp. I am also interested in using functional MRI to observe non-invasive brain stimulation with magnetic induction in situ, which requires developing new hardware and software that minimizes the interactions between these two methods.
Lana Kaiser, PhD
Associate Research Professor
My research aims to provide insights into brain metabolism in healthy aging using advanced 1H MR spectroscopy (MRS) methods. At present, I am developing methods to study glucose metabolism, brain thermometry, and the brain-gut axis. The first step was to determine a referencing system capable of discriminating between the small chemical shifts of complex, overlapping metabolite patterns, which was achieved with a small molecule sold as a nutritional supplement. The new chemical shift reference is now being used to determine accurate spectral information – a basis set – on more than fifty compounds expected to be present in a human brain.
Ioannis Pappas, PhD
Post-doctoral Associate
My research focus lies in clinical neuroscience, with specific emphasis in stroke. I use methods such as structural and functional MRI, perfusion and diffusion MRI, and spectroscopy. I am investigating abnormal cerebral perfusion and what it means for behavior after stroke. I am also investigating the different roles of functional and structural disconnections that come with different lesions and their impact on brain network reorganization. I recently began to investigate markers for brain metabolism using spectroscopy data and the potential changes in stroke patients. Collectively, I aim to use these neural markers to predict recovery and rehabilitation.
Affiliated Scientists
Scott Baraban, PhD
Professor, Neurological Surgery, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
George Brooks, PhD
Professor, Department of Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley
The Lactate Shuttle Theory: Relevance for Traumatic Brain Injury & More (interview)
John Clarke, PhD
Professor of the Graduate School, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley
Steve Conolly, PhD
Professor, Department of Bioengineering, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, UC Berkeley
Nina Dronkers, PhD
Visiting Researcher, Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley and Adjunct Professor, Department of Neurology, UC Davis.
Blaise Frederick, PhD
Associate Professor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and Associate Biophysicist at McLean Hospital, Belmont MA.
Cathra Halabi, MD
Assistant Professor, Neurology, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and Director, UCSF Neurorecovery Clinic
Mike Horning, PhD
Research Associate, Department of Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley and Co-founder & CEO at Medostic
Maria Ivanova, PhD
Research Scientist, UC Berkeley and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Center for Language and Brain at the National Research University HSE in Moscow, Russia
Andy Kayser, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Neurology, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
Jenny Mitchell, PhD
Director, Institute for Translational Neuroscience and Associate Professor, Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry, UCSF
Jeff Pelton, PhD
Manager, Central California 900 MHz NMR Facility, QB3, UC Berkeley
Fernando Pérez, PhD
Assistant Professor, Statistics Department and BIDS Senior Fellow, UC Berkeley
JB Poline, PhD
Associate Professor, Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University, Canada
Wade Smith, MD, PhD
Professor, Neurology, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and Director of the UCSF Neurovascular Service
Stéfan van der Walt, PhD
Senior Research Data Scientist, Berkeley Institute for Data Science.