Research & Publications

I trained first as a molecular biologist and neuroscientist, then completed postdoctoral work in medical physics and neuroimaging. Over the years, I’ve worked in academic medicine, research institutes, universities, and collaborative research groups, studying questions ranging from memory and brain development to concussion, chronic pain, aging, dementia, mindfulness, and the organization of large-scale brain networks. I continue to collaborate on neuroscience research alongside my clinical work.

Why this matters in the therapy room

My research background is one reason I’m quite comfortable working with complex cases. Dizziness, for example, may involve attention, vision, balance, anxiety, injury, and sensory processing at the same time. Chronic pain can affect mood, sleep, movement, attention, relationships, and a person’s sense of identity.

This is all about process: patients benefit from my cellular and brain biology background, of course, but more importantly from my way of asking questions, checking assumptions, considering more than one explanation, and changing the working model when the evidence no longer fits.

Brain networks, balance, and concussion

A substantial part of my recent research has focused on the brain systems involved in balance, visual motion, attention, emotion, and recovery after concussion. That research seems to show that brain areas linked to what we’ve traditionally thought of as “sensory” or “perceptual” functions may be directly connected to areas with visual, cognitive, and emotional functions, body boundaries, and even pain.

That’s exciting, because it gives us a model to understand why, for example, thoughts, emotions, physical pain, and trauma may lead to dissociation or vice versa.

Pain, aging, memory, and neurological illness

Other projects have examined chronic pain, fibromyalgia, temporomandibular disorders (TMJ disorder or TMD), brain aging, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and ischemic injury, and the neural systems involved in memory. Some of this work has focused on what brain imaging can tell us about symptoms; some has focused on how networks reorganize with illness, injury, aging, or treatment.

These interests eventually became personal as well as scientific. Caring for my mother during her battle with Alzheimer’s disease profoundly changed the direction of my career and eventually led me into psychotherapy and medical family therapy.

Mindfulness, mental health, and clinician well-being

I’ve also collaborated on research examining mindfulness training in healthcare trainees, including changes in brain connectivity, mental health, and sleep.

I’m interested in this kind of work because psychological interventions are also biological experiences. Learning, attention, relationships, stress, sleep, and repeated practice all involve a living nervous system.

Brain networks and research methods

Some of my work is less directly clinical. I’ve developed and applied brain-network analysis methods, worked with structural and functional MRI and spectroscopy, contributed to brain atlases for neuroimaging research, and collaborated on methods for studying how communication among brain regions changes over time.

That methodological work matters to me for the same reason the clinical work does: complicated systems are rarely understood well by looking at one piece in isolation.

Publications

My work includes peer-reviewed journal articles, books, conference presentations, research tools, and other scholarly work spanning neuroscience and mental health.

For most visitors, a short selection of representative work is probably enough. For colleagues or others who want more detail, the publications list appears below in expandable sections.

Selected recent and representative work

• Concussion (also known as traumatic brain injury, TBI, or mild TBI)
• The vestibular neuromatrix and related work on balance, perception, and brain networks
• Chronic pain, fibromyalgia, and temporomandibular disorders
• Mindfulness, clinician well-being, and brain connectivity
• Dementia, aging, memory, and neurological illness
• Methods papers on brain-network organization and neuroimaging

Books and public writing

In addition to academic publications, I’ve also written books and public-facing materials for patients, caregivers, clinicians, and general readers, including work on dementia caregiving, Embodied Depth Integration (EDI), and practical coping tools.

Full publications list