TMSLAB.ORG - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School / Director of Psychiatry, Berenson - Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation
Job Titles:
- Professor of Neurology / Boston Children 's Hospital
Alexander Rotenberg, M.D., Ph.D. is a practicing neurologist and epileptologist at Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where he is the Director of the Neuromoduation Program within the department of Neurology. He received his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University and combined graduate degrees from State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, before completing the residency in Child Neurology and fellowship in Epilepsy and Clinical Neurophysiology at Children's Hospital. Dr. Rotenberg leads local efforts to adapt methods for TMS and other forms of noninvasive brain stimulation to the pediatric population, particularly to children with epilepsy. He also heads a basic science laboratory where experiments focus on translational applications of noninvasive brain stimulation in animal models of epilepsy and brain injury.
In the basic science laboratory, Dr. Rotenberg and his staff have developed novel methods for TMS and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in vivo in rodents and in vitro in isolated brain slice preparations. TMS and tDCS have in common the capacity to safely induce durable changes in neuronal activity. Limited experience with human patients, including those treated at Children's Hospital and the Berenson-Allen Center, show that TMS and tDCS have realistic prospects for suppressing seizures. Yet TMS and tDCS mechanisms of action are incompletely understood, and whether these techniques can prevent the onset of epilepsy after various forms of brain injury has not been tested. To characterize the cellular mechanisms by which TMS and tDCS exert their effect, and ultimately to optimize their clinical efficacy, Dr. Rotenberg's laboratory studies them in rat epilepsy models, including models of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic epilepsy. Also, to determine how best to match noninvasive brain stimulation mechanisms to those of brain injury and epilepsy, his laboratory studies the molecular changes associated with TBI in rats.
In parallel to Dr. Rotenberg's basic science experiments, he and his staff are enrolling subjects into ongoing clinical trials aimed to further develop techniques for noninvasive brain stimulation, particularly TMS, as diagnostic and therapeutic tools in child neurology.
Job Titles:
- Manager, Berenson - Allen Center Operations
Job Titles:
- Clinical Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Clinical Research Operations Director
Job Titles:
- Clinical Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Physical Therapist
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Danylo Cabral is a physical therapist and neuroscientist. He holds a Ph.D. in Physical Therapy from the University of Miami (2022). Over the past 4 years, he worked as a research associate at the Neuromotor Plasticity Laboratory and had the opportunity to collaborate in several studies on the use of noninvasive brain stimulation (transcranial magnetic stimulation) and physical exercise to unravel the underlying mechanisms of neuroplasticity in aging adults. He is an industrious researcher who has published 13 peer-reviewed scientific articles and presented several abstracts and oral sessions at local, national, and international conferences. He also received the American Council on Exercise Certification in Health and Wellness Coach and has become more interested in health education and wellness coaching strategies aiming to elucidate behavior change paradigms and develop solutions to improve lifestyle health and exercise adherence in the aging population. He is also working on ultimately further developing my scientific career to incorporate the science of behavior change into the neuroscience of exercise and brain health.
The focus of his current work at the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation is research using noninvasive brain stimulation and neurophysiologic and neuroimaging studies to gain insights into fundamental human brain functions and brain-behavior relations in health and disease. More specifically, under the supervision of Dr. Peter Fried, he is working on a project that investigates the relationships of brain glutamate, cortical plasticity (coupling TMS-EEG-EMG), and cognitive function in older adults with Type-2 diabetes.
Job Titles:
- Clinical Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Clinical Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Neuromodulation Technician
Job Titles:
- Clinical Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Clinical Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School
Michael Fox, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Laboratory for Brain Network Imaging and Modulation .
Dr. Fox received a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Ohio State University in 2001 followed by an MD and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis in 2008. Following a medical internship at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, he completed his Neurology Residency and Movement Disorders Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He joined the faculty of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in 2014.
Research Interests:
Clinically, Dr. Fox specializes in the use of both invasive and noninvasive brain stimulation for the treatment of neurological disease. His practice includes deep brain stimulation (DBS) for the treatment of Parkinson's Disease, essential tremor, and dystonia as well as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for treatment of medication-refractory depression.
Dr. Fox's research focuses on the development of new and improved treatments for neuropsychiatric disease based on understanding brain networks and the effects of brain stimulation. He is a recognized expert in the use of brain network imaging techniques such as resting state functional connectivity MRI and a leader in applying these techniques towards improved brain stimulation therapies. He is the author of numerous highly cited articles in the fields of brain imaging and brain stimulation, teaches courses on these topics at the Martino's Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH and the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at BIDMC, holds multiple patents, and has won several awards for his work.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Neurology
- Associate Director for Research Assistant Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School
Job Titles:
- Lecturer
- Affiliated Lab Member
Dr. Fecteau is a lecturer at the Harvard CME in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation since 2005 and the CME in Introduction to Transcranial Current Stimulation in Neuropsychiatric Research since 2017. She earned a PhD degree in Biomedical Sciences from University of Montreal (2005, Honors) and trained as a postdoctoral fellow and instructor at the BACNIBS (2005-2010). She currently holds a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroplasticity (2010-present) and is an Associate Professor at Laval University. She also serves as Editor for Brain Stimulation Elsevier and Scientific Reports Nature Publishing Group and member of the College of Reviewers of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Her research uses non-invasive brain stimulation combined with neuroimaging to understand cognitive functions and psychiatric symptoms.
Job Titles:
- Fellow in Neuropsychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
- Foundational Fellow in the Clinical Neurosciences
Job Titles:
- Clinical Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School / Director of the Memory A2Z Clinic, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
- Director of the Memory A2Z Clinic
Dr. Buss is the Director of the Memory A2Z Clinic, which utilizes a multidisciplinary approach for caring for patients with cognitive disorders and their families. She is focused primarily on the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias such as fronto-temporal dementia, Lewy Body disease, and vascular dementia.
Job Titles:
- Cognitive Neurology Nurse Practitioner
Job Titles:
- Instructor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School / Director of Psychiatry, Berenson - Allen Center for Noninvaisve Brain Stimulation