TSA SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD

Tamara Hershey, Ph.D., SAB Co-Chair; Washington University School of Medicine
Tamara Hershey is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Hershey is a neuropsychologist interested in the neural underpinnings of cognitive dysfunction in several diseases relevant to dopamine and/or development, including Tourette syndrome, Parkinson’s disease and attention deficit disorder. Using a combination of functional neuroimaging (PET and fMRI), pharmacological and cognitive techniques, Dr. Hershey is trying to differentiate the effects of these very different disease processes on dopaminergic and cognitive systems. 

Jonathan W. Mink, M.D., Ph.D., SAB Co-Chair; University of Rochester Medical Center
Jonathan W. Mink, M.D., Ph.D. is Professor of Neurology, Neurobiology & Anatomy, Brain & Cognitive Sciences, and Pediatrics at the University of Rochester where he is also Chief of Child Neurology.  Dr. Mink has an active research program that focuses on movement disorders, including Tourette Syndrome, and neurodegenerative diseases in children.  Clinically, he specializes in movement disorders in children.   Dr. Mink was a member of the TSA Medical Advisory Board from 1999 – 2005 and has been co-chair of the TSA Scientific Advisory Board since 2006.

Adam R. Aron, Ph. D., University of California, San Diego
Adam Aron is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Aron's research interests include:
• Cognitive control/executive function
• Stopping, switching, working memory, emotional and motivation regulation
• Prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia
• Functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging of the brain
• Human lesion methodology and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
• Huntington’s disease, ADHD, Tourette syndrome and other impulse control disorders.

Kevin M. Biglan, M.D., M.P.H. University of Rochester Medical Center
Kevin Biglan is Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Dr. Biglan’s research interests include identifying clinical phenotypes in pre-manifest Huntington’s disease, identifying disease modifying therapies in Huntington’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, and enhancing care delivery in neurodegenerative disorders.

S. Barak Caine, Ph.D., McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School
Barak Caine is Associate Professor and Director of the Neuroscience Program in the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center, McLean Hospital - Harvard Medical School. The Neuroscience Program conducts preclinical studies designed to identify new targets for medications development using a combination of genetic engineering and operant behavioral procedure

Nicole Calakos, M.D., Ph.D., Duke University Medical Center
Nicole Calakos, M.D., Ph.D. is Assistant Professor at the Center for Translational Neuroscience, Departments of Neurology and Neurobiology at Duke University. In this capacity, she combines clinical care of Movement Disorder patients with laboratory research. Her laboratory studies communication between nerve cells in the brain and how these affect the control of movement and decision-making in medical conditions such as dystonia, TS, Parkinson's disease, and OCD.

Robert Chen, M.A., M.B.B.Chir,B.Sc., Toronto Western Hospital
Dr. Robert Chen is Professor of Medicine (Neurology) and the Director of the Department of Medicine Clinician Scientist Training Program at the University of Toronto. He also holds the Catherine Manson Chair in Movement Disorders.  His research interests are human motor physiology, brain plasticity and pathophysiology of movement disorders such as dystonia and Parkinson’s disease.  He has authored over 190 peer-reviewed research papers.

Marian DiFiglia, M.D., Ph.D., Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School
Marian M. DiFiglia is Professor of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Dr. DiFiglia currently leads a multidisciplinary research team investigating the role of the Huntington’s Disease (HD) mutation in the molecular and cellular events leading to neurodegeneration. Her research efforts use engineered neuronal cell lines, transgenic animals and the HD postmortem brain for studying the pathogenesis and potential treatments for HD.

Joseph Garner, D. Phil., Stanford University
Joseph Garner, graduated from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Medicine and Courtesy Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. His research concentrates on the relationship between abnormal repetitive behaviors in laboratory animals and similar behaviors in human neuropsychiatric disorders. He is particularly interested understanding why certain at-risk individuals develop repetitive movements, while others do not.

Denise Head, Ph.D., McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience, Washington University
Dr. Heads background is in clinical psychology with a specialty in neuropsychology. The broad focus of her research program is the exploration of the constellation of age-related brain changes and their relations with cognition. The underlying objective is to gain a greater understanding of the neural underpinnings of cognitive aging, the contributing factors and effective intervention. To accomplish these goals Dr. Head uses a variety of techniques including neuroimaging, cognitive-experimental paradigms, and self-report.

Peter J. Hollenbeck, Ph.D., Purdue University
Dr Hollenbeck is Professor and Associate Head of Biological Sciences at Purdue University.  He is a cellular neuroscientist focused on the life cycle of mitochondria in the nervous system, and its implications for neural development and disease. His laboratory's major research tools are neuronal cell culture, animal models, genetics and advanced optical imaging.  He served as co-chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board from 2005-2001, and has also done public outreach work for the TSA.

David E. Housman, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Housman is the Ludwig Professor of Biology, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Housman's research focuses on the identification and characterization of genes involved in human diseases using high-throughput mapping of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). He and his colleagues have developed a rapid genotyping technology to determine the genetic roots of neurodegenerative disease, cancer and cardiovascular disease. The same approach can now be applied to determining the genetic basis of pharmacological response. Inter-patient variability in drug efficacy, metabolism and toxicity introduces considerable unknowns that can obscure results in human clinical trials.

C. J. Malanga, M.D., Ph.D., University of North Carolina
C.J. Malanga is Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Malanga’s research focuses on the development and function of brain circuits involved in reward perception and reinforcement of motivated behaviors. His laboratory studies mouse models of human neurodevelopmental disorders, including prenatal exposure to drugs of abuse and genetic mutations relevant to the study of autism. His recent research focuses on the neuropharmacology of Angelman syndrome, fragile X syndrome, and fetal alcohol syndrome.

Peggy Nopoulos, M.D., University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine
Peg Nopoulos. M.D. is the Kate Daum Research Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Neurology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa.  Her research is focused on brain and behavior and utilizes neuroimaging as its major tool for these studies.  Topics of interest include brain development, sex differences, brain structure and function in children with specific conditions:  those born with oral clefts, children born prematurely, and children who carry the expansion of the Huntington gene.

Laurie Ozelius, Ph.D., Mount Sinai Medical School
Dr. Ozelius is an Associate Professor in Genetics and Genomic Sciences and an Associate Professor in neurology at Mount Sinai Medical School. Dr. Ozelius graduated with a Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard Medical School. Her research interests center around genetics of movement disorders, particularly hereditary dystonia and Parkinson's disease (PD). .

Jane S. Paulsen, Ph.D., University of Iowa
Jane Paulsen, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, Psychology and Neurosciences at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine has been active in research exploring the cognitive and behavioral correlates of neuropsychological disease for over 20 years. She is the Principal Investigator of PREDICT-HD, an international observational study of healthy persons at known genetic risk for Huntington disease. The study is designed to detect early markers of HD prior to changes in motor ability, and the findings represent the greatest growth in knowledge about the disease since study of it began. Dr. Paulsen is a frequent speaker at HD events both nationally and internationally.

Susan R. Sesack, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Sesack is a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Sesack’s research focuses on the monoamine and cortical systems that regulate cognitive and emotional behaviors. These systems have been implicated in the pathophysiology of mental and affective disorders and represent the circuitry that is disrupted by substance abuse. The results of research in the Sesack laboratory provide important connectivity data for models of brain function and insight into how experience alters brain anatomy.

Tristram H. Smith, Ph.D., University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry
Tristram Smith, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC). He is currently a behavior specialist in the Community Consultation Program in the Strong Center for Developmental Disabilities and a researcher who conducts studies aimed at identifying effective interventions for children with autism. He has authored a number of studies suggesting that behavioral interventions may be especially effective when implemented intensively (more than 20 hours per week) and early (beginning prior to the age of five years).

Robert S. Turner, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Turner studies normal functions of the basal ganglia and dysfunctions that lead to disorders such as Parkinson's disease, dystonia, and Tourette's syndrome. The Turner lab uses single-cell recording and inactivation approaches in non-human primates. Significantly, in conflict with the traditional action selection and habit storage hypotheses of basal ganglia function, the Turner group recently found that inactivations that essentially disconnected the basal ganglia from other motor control centers resulted in no impairments of movement initiation or recall and execution of familiar skills.