Principal Investigator
Dara S. Manoach, PhD, Paul B. and Sandra M. Edgerley MGH Research Scholar 2019-2024 is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is a neuropsychologist who received her Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. She completed a clinical psychology internship at McLean Hospital and a fellowship in clinical neuropsychology at the Behavioral Neurology Unit of Beth Israel Hospital. She is based at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for biomedical imaging and in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Faculty
Bengi Baran, Ph.D. is an Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She received her PhD in Psychological and Brain Sciences from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She completed the postdoctoral training program in Sleep, Circadian and Respiratory Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School’s Division of Sleep Medicine. Her research focuses on understanding the cognitive function of sleep in neuropsychiatric disorders. She uses MRI (event-related and resting state fMRI and diffusion weighted imaging), sleep EEG and behavioral testing methods. In her spare time she studies wine and food.
Angela Fang, Ph.D. received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Boston University in 2014, and her A.B. in Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College in 2007. Her research interests involve the neural correlates of self-focused processing in psychiatric disorders and their relationship to treatment outcome. She is also interested in the use of intranasal oxytocin to modulate cognitive biases in patients with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive related disorders.
Dimitris S. Mylonas, Ph.D. received his PhD in Applied Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the National Technical University of Athens in 2014. His research interests include the development and implementation of new analysis methods to neuroimaging data (EEG/MEG and MRI). He joined the Manoach Lab as a postodoctoral research fellow in October 2015. He is currently investigating the role of brain oscillations during wake and sleep in learning and sleep-dependent memory impairment in schizophrenia.
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Bryan Baxter, Ph.D. completed his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Bryan’s Ph.D. work examined how transcranial current stimulation interacts with ongoing activity in the brain to improve performance of noninvasive Brain-Computer Interfaces. His current interests are an extension of this work examining how noninvasive stimulation interacts with endogenous neural activity during sleep and how this interaction can be utilized to improve cognition and memory. He is also interested in bioethics related to neural stimulation in populations with neuropsychiatric conditions.
Megan Thompson, Ph.D. completed her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Francisco-University of California, Berkeley Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering. She then completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Boston University, where she investigated the relationship between neuroimaging and cognitive models. Her interests include motor learning and neuroimaging methods (MEG/EEG, fMRI, and ECoG) of investigating it. She is currently investigating the role of coordinated neural oscillations in sleep-dependent memory consolidation of motor sequences.
Lab Manager
Lindsey Woodham, MLS received her BS in Biology from Colorado State University and a Master of Liberal Studies from the University of Southern California where she also managed a cancer research lab in the department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. Her masters research investigated the possibility of alternative, non-traditional therapy for trauma survivors. Currently she is focused on helping the Manoach lab operate smoothly and efficiently.
Research Coordinators
Sasha Machado, BSc received her BSc in Neuroscience at Brown University in May 2018. During her time at Brown she focused on using molecular and biochemical techniques to develop a system for trans-synaptic fluorescent labeling of neurons. She is currently investigating the role of sleep-dependent memory consolidation and the thalamic reticular nucleus in Autism Spectrum Disorder using MEG/EEG.
Kristi Kwok, BSc completed her bachelors of science in biology at Emory University. During her time at Emory, she studied decision making and reward pathways in individuals with mood disorders using fMRI imaging. She is currently conducting research on memory consolidation during sleep in individuals with schizophrenia using EEG and MEG.
Research Associates
Rudra Patel, BSc received her BSc in neuroscience from Simmons University. During her time at Simmons, she was involved in sleep research investigating the effects of sleep restriction on the body’s inflammatory resolution pathways. In the Manoach lab, she is working with data processing and various data acquisition techniques such as EEG, MEG and MRI.
External Collaborators
Jason Barton, MD PhD: Neuroophthalmology
Frank Guenther, MS, PhD: Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences and Biomedical Engineering
Shaun Purcell, PhD: Sleep and Neuropsychiatric Genetics
Ann Shinn, MD, MPH: Sleep-Dependent Memory Consolidation