Frontiers of BrainHealth

As Director of the Neuroimmunology and Behavior Lab at UT Dallas, Michael Burton, PhD, researches how the immune and nervous systems communicate to influence pain and comorbidities like depression and anxiety. His research interests extend into aging, nutrition, alcohol consumption and immune activation. He is a founding member of the Center for Advanced Pain Studies and a 2024-2025 Mayday Pain & Society Fellow.

Neuroimmunology and Behavior

Florence Chiang, PhD, focuses on research to develop and translate computational neuroimaging methods to identify and implement imaging biomarkers of disease progression and treatment response in multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. She is an assistant professor at the O’Donnell Brain Institute at UT Southwestern.

Computational Neuroimaging and Biomarkers of Neurodegenerative Disease

Katherine Damme, PhD, researches the adolescent brain, including pathways of risk for psychopathology and ways to promote healthy neural and cognitive development. She is an assistant professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences and Center for Vital Longevity at UT Dallas.


Psychosis Risk and Resilience During Adolescence: Insights From Women’s Neurodevelopment

An award-winning researcher and statistician, Russell Almond, PhD, delves deep into the human sciences, researching ways to measure properties of a person which cannot be directly observed. In this talk, he uses examples from education, psychology and exercise physiology to illustrate procedures for measuring real-life constructs, including practices that can advance how tomorrow's researchers work to define, measure and improve brain health.


Defining Constructs with Context and Claims

Hal Urshel III, MD, MMA and Fransceca Filbey, PhD. 

Addiction psychiatrist and author of the New York Times bestseller Healing the Addicted Brain, Harold Urschel, MD, MMA, teams up with Center for BrainHealth's Francesca Filbey, PhD, world-renowned expert in the brain mechanisms of addictive disorders – to discuss both the clinical and the basic science aspects of the myriad, harmful effects of marijuana on the human brain and body. 

The Dangers of Marijuana on Mental Health

Delivering the right treatment to the right patient at the right time can significantly improve outcomes while minimizing adverse events and side effects. Inspired by Precision Medicine in oncology, Dr. Matt Huentelman and his team apply these principles to the aging brain, aiming to align cognitive healthspan with lifespan and improve the prediction and prevention of age-related cognitive diseases, terming this approach "Precision Aging." This talk introduces internet- and lab-based approaches to advance this effort.

Scale and Diversity to Empower Precision Aging

Stephen G. Lomber, PhD, is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at University of Texas at Arlington where he directs the Cerebral Systems Laboratory, conducting research that uses an integrated approach of psychophysics, electrophysiological recording, neuroanatomical techniques, and functional imaging to examine processing in the auditory cortex. 

Acoustic Experience Alters How You “See” the World

Professor, author and podcaster Daniel Krawczyk, PhD, studies reasoning, decision-making, human performance, and the relationships between the brain and behavior during these processes. His cognitive neuroscience research lab focuses on understanding reasoning and decision making using a diversity of methods, including behavioral studies, machine learning, imaging and brain stimulation. He has led multiple federally funded studies evaluating thinking and cognitive performance.

Psychology and Neuroscience of Human Values 

The Center for Advanced Pain Studies (CAPS) at UTD focuses on developing non-opioid pain therapeutics. Theodore Price, PhD, will discuss how his lab collaborates to profile the molecular composition of pain circuits in humans, and how they change when people have chronic pain, describing how this data can help validate targets and develop non-opioid pain therapeutics and seven companies working to achieve commercialization of these ideas and products.

Human Molecular Neuroscience Insight into the Next Generation of Pain Therapeutics 

The enormous increase in mental health disorders around the world demands a new view of brain health that satisfies the 4Ps: personalized, preventive, predictive and participatory. Paul Zak, PhD, defines emotional fitness, shares research that has established the 4Ps for emotional health, and discusses findings from the launch of a scalable real-time app that measures emotional fitness neurologically and guides users to improved emotional fitness.

The Neuroscience of Emotional Fitness

The current approach to brain care is largely reactive, considered only when patients or families raise concerns. This approach is not working, and the more money is spent on it, the greater disability is generated. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD, proposes a transformative approach, leveraging technology and learning from car racing to establish a “pit stop model of brain care,” focused on a Brain Health Service Line designed to support individuals across the lifespan.

The Pit Stop Model of Brain Care: A Lifelong Brain Health Service Line

Brain Performance Institute building at dusk, exterior photo

Dr. Sandi Chapman asks a question during a live Frontiers of BrainHealth talk inside Center for BrainHealth's Brain Performance Institute.

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