Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation (CNBS)
Optimizing and applying noninvasive brain stimulation to health care and research

Faculty

Shirley Fecteau, PhD
Research Faculty

I received a BA and MA in Linguistics at Universite Laval (Quebec City, Canada) and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences at Universite de Montreal studying neural activity associated with language and emotional processes using functional MRI. I joined the CNIBS in August 2005 for my post-doctoral training. I was awarded a fellowship by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and appointed Instructor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School in 2007.

Research Interests / Research Focus

My current research program can be divided into two sections: (1) Neuromodulation of prefrontal functions in the healthy brain. This work aims at transiently modifying cognitive functions, especially communication skills, decision-making behaviors (risk-taking, substance craving), deception, and empathy, in the healthy brain. For instance, we showed that neuromodulation of the prefrontal areas lead to a decrease in risk-taking behaviors in healthy individuals (Fecteau et al. 2007a,b J Neurosci). (2) Neuromodulation of prefrontal functions in the pathological brain. The two main goals of my work regarding the pathological brain are to: (A) characterize the bihemispheric neural network serving communication processing in autism spectrum disorders using behavioral-independent measure, the real-time combination TMS/fMRI, and (B) explore the potential of neuromodulation targeting the language neural network in this population to promote language acquisition. This work should contribute at defining brain plasticity that may occur in autism spectrum disorders. Given the intrinsic plastic properties of the brain, the challenge is to understand maladaptive plasticity present in this pathology to guide the promotion of adaptive behaviors. This work is supported by grants from the National Alliance for Autism Research and the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation.

Link to NIH Formatted CV

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