Neural circuits for movement, thought, and emotion.
Role of Cerebellum and Basal Ganglia in neurologic and psychiatric disorders.

The overarching goal of my research is to understand the organization and function of neural circuits at the interface between movement, thought, and emotion.

I am a graduate of the University of Toronto (2006) and received my doctorate in Neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh (2013). At the University of Toronto, I worked with Dr. Douglas Cheyne on a series of studies using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to characterize activity in sensorimotor cortical areas and helped refine procedures using MEG for pre-surgical mapping in pediatric populations. As a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, I worked with Dr. Peter L. Strick to establish that the cerebellum and the basal ganglia are interconnected and form an integrated network with the cerebral cortex. These results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (2010) and continue to have a profound impact on concepts about contributions of the basal ganglia and the cerebellum to health and disease. As discussed in a Nature Reviews Neuroscience (2018) review, I am particularly interested in how changes in the integrated networks, which link the cerebral cortex with the basal ganglia and the cerebellum, contribute to the manifestation of neurologic and psychiatric disorders.

My current research is focused on using neuroanatomical tracing techniques to refine the understanding of how the cortico-basal ganglia-cerebellar networks are organized and to provide further insights into their function. I am also conducting neuroanatomical tracing experiments to explore how these networks are integrated into the neural circuitry for top-down control of cardiovascular function.