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Faculty/Scientists

Sandra Chapman, Ph.D.
Founder and Chief Director
Distinguished Professor
Center for BrainHealth®
The University of Texas at Dallas

Dr. Chapman’s research is advancing a better understanding of how to protect and heal cognitive brain function from brain injuries and diseases, and how to strengthen healthy brain development across the lifespan. She believes brain health and maximizing brain function is a cause that touches everybody. As Chief Director of the Center for BrainHealth®, her vision is for Texas to becomean international focal point for brain health discoveryby applying the latest in brain research to faster treatments than anything that has come before.

Dr. Chapman is a cognitive neuroscientist and was awarded one of top 25 Changemakers of 2009 by the Dallas-Fort Worth Business Journal and has been featured on CNN and in Forbes Magazine and Texas Monthly, as well as on national and local news.

“Until recently, our whole idea of fitness stopped at the neck. Now, thanks to new breakthroughs in brain science we are discovering key ways to build a healthy brain and to repair brain injury and disease,” said Dr. Chapman, who also holds the Dee Wyly Distinguished Professor in BrainHealth and is a professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at UT Dallas.

Dr. Chapman's research areas are devoted to:

• develop more sensitive benchmark and diagnostic measures;
• design and test cutting-edge brain training/cognitive training to build stronger brain function; and
• measure brain change and real-life improvements in response to new treatments.

With more than 100 publications and 30 funded research grants, her research spans the age spectrum, from studies that evaluate the brain’s capacity to rewire in brain-injured children and adolescents to research focused on understanding the potential for plasticity in the workplace and throughout adulthood into advanced age.

She has developed diagnostic measures and high-level cognitive treatment protocols to maximize cognitive function in both people with healthy brains and those with brain injury, stroke, ADHD, Alzheimer’s disease and other progressive brain diseases, autism, schizophrenia, among others. On the new frontier of brain research, Dr. Chapman is collaborating with brain scientists across the country to solve some of the most important issues concerning the brain and its health.

Under Dr. Chapman’s leadership, the Center has developed clinical research programs dedicated to understanding, protecting and healing the brain. The Center’s goal is to optimize brain health after brain injury or diseases, and to strengthen brain function across the life span. Dr. Chapman works extensively with researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and has established rich collaborations with major medical centers across the country. Her research, with more than 100 publications, spans the age spectrum from studies that evaluate the brain’s capacity to rewire in brain-injured children and adolescents to research focused on understanding the potential for plasticity throughout adulthood into advanced age. She has developed diagnostic measures and cognitive treatment protocols to maximize mental function in individuals with a wide array of brain concerns including, but not limited to, brain injury, stroke, chemotherapy, ADHD, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, as well as healthy brain function throughout life.

Email: schapman@utdallas.edu

Raksha Anand, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Research Interests: Discourse gist processing in normal aging, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s disease, and higher level semantic processing in mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

Email: raksha.anand@utdallas.edu

 

 

Mark D’Esposito, M.D.
Visiting Distinguished Scholar
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Research Interests: Neural basis of working memory in humans; functions of human prefrontal cortex; fMRI.

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Dr. D’Esposito is Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology; Director, Brain Imaging Center, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley and Editor in Chief of The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. His research focuses on investigating the neural bases of high-level cognitive processes such as working memory and executive control. He is a visiting scholar at UT Dallas’s Center for BrainHealth, and part of BrainHealth’s Research Advisory Board.

Jacque Gamino, Ph.D.
Research Scientist, ADHD Research Head
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Research Interests: Childhood development of selective learning (the ability to learn important information while suppressing unimportant information); childhood learning differences, especially in children with ADHD.

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Dr. Gamino is interested in all modes of learning, especially in the developing child. In addition, she studies how various conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder affect learning in children. Her primary focus is on children’s ability to selectively attend to and learn important information while simultaneously disregarding or inhibiting less important information. Although the human brain performs most efficiently when it is attending to and storing only the most important stimuli, some children do not automatically develop this approach to learning. Her research focuses on children’s strategy use and the effectiveness of training strategies to enhance learning.

John Hart, Jr., M.D.
Medical Science Director
Jane and Bud Smith Distinguished Chair
Cecil Green Distinguished Chair
Professor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Joint appointment in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry at
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Research Interests: Dr. Hart’s research focuses on neural basis of storing and accessing memories. Dr. Hart’s laboratory uses a variety of investigative techniques to perform these studies, including electrophysiology (EEG), structural brain imaging, and functional brain imaging.

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Dr. Hart is the President of the Society for Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology and the Behavioral Neurology Section of the American Academy of Neurology. He is one of the world’s foremost experts on how you store and access knowledge in your brain, known as semantic memory. In 1985, Dr. Hart was the lead author on the seminal paper published in the prestigious journal Nature that established that knowledge is stored in the brain by categories. This was followed by a second major finding published in Nature showing that features and categories are the storage units of knowledge in the brain. In 1998 and 2002, two more major discoveries were published as Track II articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) that showed the actual time it takes in the brain to recall an object memory, and Dr. Hart’s lab key discovery of the actual mechanism of how the brain combines parts of memories together to form an integrated object memory. He and his collaborators have now used this key finding to assess patients with a wide variety of disorders including normal aging, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment, traumatic head injury, attention deficit disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, Gulf War Syndrome, and schizophrenia. The findings in these studies will lead to targeted treatment interventions for semantic memory retrieval problems in these diseases. In addition, the work that he has performed in knowledge storage will be applied to children with difficulties in this area (e.g. autism, ADHD, TBI, etc.) and in developing optimal programs for use in educational systems.

 

Joanna L. Hutchison, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
UT Southwestern Medical Center Department of Psychiatry

Research Interests: Cognition and circumstances that affect cognition, such as aging, traumatic brain injury, and psychiatric illness (e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression); auditory processing; fMRI.

Email: joanna.hutchison@utdallas.edu

Dr. Hart is the President of the Society for Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology and the Behavioral Neurology Section of the American Academy of Neurology. He is one of the world’s foremost experts on how you store and access knowledge in your brain, known as semantic memory. In 1985, Dr. Hart was the lead author on the seminal paper published in the prestigious journal Nature that established that knowledge is stored in the brain by categories. This was followed by a second major finding published in Nature showing that features and categories are the storage units of knowledge in the brain. In 1998 and 2002, two more major discoveries were published as Track II articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) that showed the actual time it takes in the brain to recall an object memory, and Dr. Hart’s lab key discovery of the actual mechanism of how the brain combines parts of memories together to form an integrated object memory. He and his collaborators have now used this key finding to assess patients with a wide variety of disorders including normal aging, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment, traumatic head injury, attention deficit disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, Gulf War Syndrome, and schizophrenia. The findings in these studies will lead to targeted treatment interventions for semantic memory retrieval problems in these diseases. In addition, the work that he has performed in knowledge storage will be applied to children with difficulties in this area (e.g. autism, ADHD, TBI, etc.) and in developing optimal programs for use in educational systems.

 

Elizabeth Kanter, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Dr. Kanter received her doctoral degree in biomedical engineering from Vanderbilt University in August 2008 after receiving a masters in the same discipline three years earlier from the University of Arizona. Research Interests: Utilizing MRI scans to detect changes/differences in the brain due to aging and ADHD; the effects of treatments and interventions on processes and disease.

Email: e.kanter@utdallas.edu

Despite decades of intense research, the brain is still the least understood organ in the human body. Dualist arguments not withstanding, everything we experience and perceive in our mind resides within the three-pound mass of tissue encased in our cranium. There are three important questions Dr. King hopes to address in his career. First, what are the key principles by which our brains work? Second, how do these principles connect brains and minds? Third, how can we bring these exciting discoveries to bear on human illnesses, especially those diseases affecting cognition?

Dr. King’s clinical focus is primarily on Alzheimer’s disease for both personal and professional reasons. On a personal level, the disease has affected multiple members of his family. Indeed, Alzheimer’s dementia will affect an increasing number of Americans as the number of cases is expected to rise to over 14 million by the year 2040. He believes that the recent advances in neuroimaging technology will lead to dramatic improvement in early diagnosis and facilitate the development of new treatment modalities.

The goals of his current research are to develop a new method for quantifying changes in the shape of the human brain as a result of degenerative disease processes, and then to relate these shape changes to the clinical assessment of the disease. Ideally, such a method could aid in both disease diagnosis and in following the progression of disease.

Dan Krawczyk, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
UT Southwestern Medical Center Department of Psychiatry

Research Interests: Working memory, reasoning, frontal lobe functions and social cognition

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Dr. Krawczyk’s research explores human goal-directed cognition and behavior with particular emphasis on the influences of incentives and perceived value on human performance. He is interested in uncovering the components of goal-directed cognition including better specifying how people encode, maintain, and manipulate valenced information to organize purposeful behavior and maximize the utility of their decisions. He employs cognitive neuroscience methods in order to understand the contributions of different brain regions to information processing, reasoning, and deciding. He is currently investigating these interests through three lines of research: (1) functional neuroimaging investigations into the integration and impact of incentives upon working memory performance, (2) behavioral studies of decision-making and preference change with healthy adult populations, and (3) investigations of relational reasoning and executive control with brain-damaged patient groups. Through these lines of study, he aims to answer basic questions in human cognition by employing and integrating the tools of cognitive neuroscience along with classical psychological methods.
Email: Daniel.krawczyk@utdallas.edu
Dan Krawczyk's Website

G. Reid Lyon, Ph.D.
Distinguished Research Scholar

Over the past 30 years, Dr. Lyon has had a wide range of professional responsibilities including his contributions as a researcher, professor, classroom teacher, special education teacher, school psychologist, and leader in the development of evidence-based education policy at the federal and state levels. He currently serves as a distinguished research scholar at the Center for BrainHealth in the school of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas-Dallas.

Dr. Lyon also founded Synergistic Education Solutions, an educational resource that provides consulting services to improve educational research, instruction and policies at national and state level.  He held the position of the Executive Vice President for Research and Evaluation at Higher Ed Holdings in Dallas, Texas from 2005 to 2008.  From 1992 until 2005, Dr. Lyon served as a research psychologist and the Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch within the National Institute of Child health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he was responsible for the direction, development and management of research programs in developmental and cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, behavioral pediatrics, reading development and disabilities, learning disabilities, early childhood development, and school readiness. 

Mandy J. Maguire, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Research Interests: Neurocognitive development, language acquisition and conceptual development.

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While much research has been done using neuroimaging and electrophysiology to study normally functioning adults, disordered adult populations and disordered child populations, to date little work focuses on how the brain processes information in normally developing children. Yet, our understanding of disordered child populations will be greatly increased by also understanding normal processing. Given advances in electrophysiological methodologies, making the technique painless for children, research in normal child development is a growing area of interest.

Dr. Maguire’s research interests include using electrophysiological and behavioral methods to study conceptual and language development in normally developing children. The long-term goal is to use knowledge gained in these projects to inform research and treatment for many different disorders that affect children, such as ADHD and autism.

Email: mjm053000@utdallas.edu

Carlos Marquez de la Plata, Ph.D.
Clinical Assistant Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
UT Southwestern Medical Center Department of Psychiatry

Research Interests: Dr. Marquez de la Plata’s research focuses primarily on identifying and ultimately improving neurocognitive and functional impairments related to various brain illnesses such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Alzheimer’s disease.  His earliest studies in this area have shown the degree of white matter lesions seen on routine clinical MRI correlates to the degree of long-term functional outcomes in both TBI and AD.  More recently he is examining more novel neuroimaging modalities to quantitate the degree of neuronal compromise present, and determine whether these measures correlate to future outcome.  Neuroimaging modalities of interest include: Diffusion Tensor Imaging, functional connectivity MRI, and EEG.  This line of research will ultimately assist in identifying individuals who might benefit from neuroprotective therapies.

Additionally, as a Spanish-speaking neuropsychologist, Dr. Marquez de la Plata is interested in developing neurocognitive measures appropriate for Spanish speakers.  Most measures currently available for use with this population are merely translations of their English originals, and as such introduce a great deal of error and bias.  Dr. Marquez de la Plata has developed a naming test for use with Spanish speakers and has published both local and international data showing a test developed in Spanish is more appropriate for use with this population than translated tests.

 

Michael A. Motes, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
UT Southwestern Medical Center Department of Psychiatry

Research Interests: Using behavioral and neuroimaging techniques, Dr. Motes explores basic visual/spatial abilities and their role in higher cognitive functions, including navigation in both real and virtual environments.

Email: michael.motes@utdallas.edu

Bart Rypma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
UT Southwestern Medical Center Department of Psychiatry

Research Interests: Cognition, aging, neurobiological mechanisms of human memory, and fMRI.

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Dr. Rypma’s research is aimed at exploring the cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms of human memory and how those mechanisms are affected by aging and disease. He uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe the activity of younger and older adults as they perform cognitive tasks. fMRI is still a relatively new method for studying brain activity and much work remains to be done to perfect it, especially when comparing different populations like young and old. Thus, one focus of Dr. Rypma’s work has been the development of fMRI experimental methods to facilitate cross-population comparisons of neural activity.

Email: bart.rypma@utdallas.edu

Gail Tillman, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Director of the EEG Lab
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Research Interests: Human electrophysiology/electroenecphalography; effect of hormones on neurocognitive processing.

Email: gtillman@utdallas.edu

 

UT Dallas Collaborators

Herve Abdi, Ph.D. – Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Face processing and computational models of face processing; neural networks; computational and statistical models of cognitive processes (especially memory and learning); experimental design; multivariate statistical analysis; statistical analysis of brain imaging data; olfaction, smell, taste, flavor, etc.

James C. Bartlett, Ph.D. – Professor, Program Head
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Nonverbal memory, aging and memory, emotions and memory

Lawrence J. Cauller, Ph.D. – Associate Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Functional architecture of reciprocal connections in sensory
neocortex

Santosh R. D’Mello, Ph.D. – Professor
UT Dallas School of Molecular and Cell Biology
Research Interests: To understand how apoptosis (programmed cell death) is regulated in neurons of the mammalian brain.

Lucinda Dean, M.S. – Clinical Education in Speech Language Pathology
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Adult neurogenic communication disorders, pediatric speech/language and swallowing disorders, and social communication disorders with adults who have Asperger Syndrome

Steven R. Goodman, Ph.D. – Professor
C.L. and Amelia A. Lundell professor of the Life Sciences
Director, Institute of Biomedical Sciences and Technology
UT Dallas School of Molecular and Cell Biology
Research Interests: Sickle Cell Disease

Robert Helms, Ph.D. – Dean of Engineering
UT Dallas School of Engineering and Computer Science

Russell Hulse, Ph.D. – Nobel Laureate
Visiting Professor of Physics, Science and Mathematics Education

James F. Jerger, Ph.D. – Distinguished Scholar in Residence
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Effects of aging on binaural auditory functioning, ERPs, brain mapping

William F. Katz, Ph.D. – Associate Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Neurolinguistics and aphasia, speech and language in normal and language-impaired children

Michael P. Kilgard, Ph.D. – Associate Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Plasticity and information processing in the auditory cortex

Dennis Kratz, Ph.D. – Dean/Professor
UT Dallas School of Arts and Humanities
Areas of Specialization: Medieval literature, classical tradition, translation, fantasy/science fiction

Tom Linehan, Ph.D. – Director/Professor
UT Dallas School of Arts and Humanities
Area of Interest: Gaming, computer, game modeling

Janice Lougeay, M.S. CCC-SLP – Director of Clinical Education
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Autism, treatment efficacy and student training

Duncan MacFarlane, Ph.D. – Professor
The Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science
Education: Ph.D., Portland State University
Research Interests: Lasers and modern optics

Candice Mills, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Social cognition; how children evaluate the knowledge and beliefs of others as well as themselves, and what changes over the course of development.

Aage Moller, Ph.D. – Professor, Margaret Fonde Jonsson Chair
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Mihai Nadin, Ph.D. – Professor
UT Dallas School of Arts and Humanities, School of Engineering and Computer Sciences
Research Interests: Anticipatory computing

Pamela R. Rollins, Ed.D. – Associate Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Language, social and communication skills in normal development and in children with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder)

Robert D. Stillman, Ph.D. – Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Preverbal and nonverbal communicative skills of children with severe communicative impairments

Tres Thompson, Ph.D. – Associate Professor
UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Research Interests: Neuronal mechanisms of memory and aging

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