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Recep A. Ozdemir, PhD

Recep A. Ozdemir, PhD
Assistant Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School
Director, Core for Electroencephalographic Signal Processing (ESP)

Education History:
Ph.D., Motor Control & Behavior, University of Houston, Department of Health & Human Performance

I have a broad background in human performance and cognitive neuroscience with extensive experience in application of noninvasive brain stimulation, electrophysiology (Electroencephalography-EEG, electromyography-EMG, peripheral nerve stimulation-PNS), and developing biomedical signal processing pipelines for large-scale data analyses.

My graduate work (2011-16) focused on cortical correlates of upright stance and locomotion in clinical populations. Our work showed how sensory input and cortical processing delays impair upright stance control during challenging postural conditions. As a junior postgraduate (2016-17), I focused on understanding sensory mechanisms of voluntary movement control and developing cortical and spinal plasticity protocols using noninvasive peripheral and brain stimulation to induce recovery of motor function in patients with spinal cord injury. During my postdoctoral appointment (2017-21) at Berenson-Allen Center, I studied brain responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and showed that perturbation-induced cortical propagation patterns are specific to the stimulated region, stable over time, and most importantly unique to a given individual, thus they reveal individual “brain fingerprints” with causal connectivity dynamics across distinct brain regions. Using this framework, we recently demonstrated functional relevance of such individual specific “brain fingerprints” in human cognition.

My current interests lie in finding predictive solutions to detect any off-nominal trends in cortical electrophysiology as potential biomarkers of pathological/impaired brain function. I am particularly interested in characterizing individually unique signatures of cortical oscillations across resting, task- and perturbation-induced brain states with the goal of optimizing noninvasive neuromodulation protocols at the individual level to induce targeted and lasting changes in brain function, which might then translate into personalized therapeutic options for neurological and psychiatric populations.

Selected Publications:

  1. Ozdemir RA, Tadayon E, Boucher P, Momi D, Karakhanyan KA, Fox MD, Halko MA, Pascual-Leone A, Shafi MM, Santarnecchi E. (2020). Individualized perturbation of the human connectome reveals reproducible biomarkers of network dynamics relevant to cognition. (PNAS) Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 117(14):8115-8125. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1911240117
  2. Ozdemir RA, Tadayon E, Boucher P, Sun H, Momi D, Ganglberger M, Westover B, Pascual-Leone A, Santarnecchi E., Shafi M (2021). Cortical Responses to Noninvasive Perturbations Enable Individual Brain Fingerprinting, Brain Stimulation, 14-2, 391-403, doi.org/10.1016/j.brs.2021.02.005
  3. Ozdemir RA, Boucher P, Fried PJ, Momi D, Jannati A, Pascual-Leone A, Santarnecchi E., Shafi M (2021) Reproducibility of Cortical Response Modulation Induced by Intermittent and Continuous Theta-burst Stimulation of the Human Motor Cortex, Brain Stimulation, 14-4, 949-964, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brs.2021.05.013
  4. Momi D, Ozdemir RA, Tadayon E, Boucher P, Shafi M, Pascual-Leone A, Santarnecchi E., (2020), Network-level Macroscale Structural Connectivity Predicts Propagation of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Neuroimage. 117698 (2020) doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117698.
  5. Momi D, Ozdemir RA, Tadayon E, Boucher P, Domenico A, Fasolo M, , Shafi M, Pascual-Leone A, Santarnecchi E., (2020). Phase‐dependent local brain states determine the impact of image‐guided TMS on motor network EEG synchronization, The Journal of Physiology, PMID: 34799873, DOI: 10.1113/JP282393
  6. Lei Y, Ozdemir RA, Perez MA. (2018). Gating of Sensory Input at Subcortical and Cortical Levels during Grasping in Humans. Journal of Neuroscience. pii: 0545-18. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0545-18.2018.
  7. Ozdemir, RA., Contreras-Vidal, J. L. & Paloski, W. H. Cortical control of upright stance in elderly. Mechanisms of ageing and development, 2018; 169, 19–31.

Complete List of Published Work in MyBibliography:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cezpbGUAAAAJ&hl=en.