Francesca Filbey, Ph.D., is an associate professor at The University of Texas at Dallas and holds the Bert Moore Chair in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. She researches the causes and consequences of addiction.
“Progress in science can be facilitated by translational research that brings real-world applications of scientific discoveries to bear. For example, a ‘bench-to-bedside’ approach brings important findings from basic research into human applications that also promotes interdisciplinary collaborations. Translational, integrative approaches allow a more comprehensive understanding of the underpinnings of behavior from vast perspectives.”
Xiaosi Gu, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Dallas. At the Center for Brain Health, her research in computational psychiatry examines the neural and computational mechanisms underlying human decision-making and social interaction in both health and disease.
“The future of mental health will be to depart from the one-pill-fits-all era to an age of individualized care that can specifically target an underlying disorder based not only on behavior, but also neural data. Using imaging technology and advanced analysis, we will one day be able to objectively measure psychological well-being and evaluate the effectiveness of treatment and therapy.”
Daniel Krawczyk, Ph.D., is an associate professor at The University of Texas at Dallas and holds the Debbie and Jim Francis Chair of BrainHealth. His research interests include working memory, reasoning, decision-making, and social cognition.
“There is a big gap from the lab to real-life surveys. As we continue to develop brain and behavioral measures, it is important to emphasize how imaging, genetics, behavior and neuropsychological markers are related and how they can work together to maximize what’s most important for daily-life functioning”
Ian Robertson, Ph.D., is the T. Boone Pickens Distinguished Scientist at the Center for BrainHealth and Chair of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin.
“One cannot consider the individual brain in isolation; it is a complex system with multiple interactions between mind, brain, body and environment.”
Bart Rypma, Ph.D., is an associate professor at The University of Texas at Dallas and holds the Meadows Foundation Chair. His research explores the cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms of human memory and how these are affected by aging and disease.
“To make meaningful contributions to improving the human condition, brain science must move beyond the study of neurons alone to understand the functioning, living brain, in its dynamic integrative entirety.”
Jeffrey S. Spence, Ph.D., is the Director of Biostatistics at the Center for BrainHealth and also holds an adjunct faculty appointment in the Department of internal Medicine, Division of Epidemiology at The UT Southwestern Medical Center.
“We must not only define brain health, but also utilize a rich, multimodal database that can objectively measure it. Successfully leveraging neuroinformatics, a combination of modeling, statistics, and computing, can make this complicated task manageable, creating a future where we can monitor the brain in health and evaluate therapeutic improvement following injury or disease.”
