The Shah Laboratory aims to identify mechanisms underlying cognitive recovery following adult and pediatric brain injury. The lab conducts clinical translational studies in both adult and pediatric brain injury, employing clinically feasible neurophysiological tools— the electroencephalogram (EEG) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)—alongside state-of-the-art neuroimaging tools (magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) ligand studies. The lab has identified novel biomarkers of altered executive function after traumatic brain injury (TBI) in adults, and in recovery from coma in pediatric subjects. Impaired integrative brain functions, particularly within the cognitive domains, such as the impaired ability to perceive, plan, reason and remember, are the most common and debilitating consequences of brain injury. Despite the tremendous acute and chronic impact of cognitive impairments post injury, efforts to accurately diagnose, sensitively prognosticate and track therapeutic interventions remain limited.
Associated Lab Members
Sudhin Shah, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of neuroscience in the department of radiology within the Brain Health and Imaging Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM). She received her B.Sc. in electrical engineering from Drexel University followed by a M.Sc. in biomedical engineering from Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in systems neuroscience from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences at Cornell University. She completed her postdoctoral training at WCM as well. Dr. Shah is also the Scientific Director of cognitive recovery research at Blythedale Children’s Hospital. She is an affiliate faculty member with the Consortium for the Advanced Study of Brain Injury at WCM. She has served on several National Institutes of Health scientific review panels, and as an invited reviewer for several journals. She has also served as a research mentor for more than 10 medical and graduate students.
Nayoung Kim is a postdoctoral associate of radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine. She received a Ph.D. from Edward P. Fitts Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University in 2019. She received a master’s degree in management engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2014, and a bachelor’s degree from Industrial and Systems Engineering at KAIST in 2011. She conducts basic and applied research in neuroscience and brain-computer interaction (BCI) with electroencephalography (EEG). She is currently working in Dr. Shah’s laboratory studying neural mechanisms underlying disorder of consciousness (DoC), as well as mechanisms of recovery. Her current research is focused on EEG-centered methodology to track and predict long-term neurological recovery. Her research has been supported by federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
Jacob Garetti is a biomedical engineer and a clinical research coordinator at Weill Cornell Medicine. He received a bachelor of science in biomedical engineering, with a concentration in medical imaging, from Yale University. For his undergraduate thesis, he worked with borderline personality disorder (BPD) patients at the Connecticut Mental Health Center. He sought to use non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) methods to discover novel electrophysiological BPD biomarkers, combatting the underdiagnosis of this often-overlooked condition. He is currently working in Dr. Shah’s laboratory as a research coordinator. He is also researching the causes and effects of increased levels of plasma markers in post-traumatic brain injury (post-TBI) patients using neuropsychological and behavioral data, and multi-modal imaging methods such as EEG, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and flumazenil-positron emission tomography (FMZ-PET).
Samuel Louviot is a postdoctoral associate of radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine. He received a Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of Lorraine in France. During his Ph.D., he performed intracerebral studies in human, in vivo, of the biophysics of transcranial electrical stimulation and its effect on electrophysiology in epilepsy and face recognition. He received a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from University of Lorraine, France, and an associate’s degree in electrical engineering from Lycée Pierre Mendes France, France. He is currently working in Dr. Shah’s laboratory studying neuromodulation of mechanisms underlying attention and disorders of consciousness.
Nicholas D. Schiff, M.D.
Susan A. Gauthier, D.O.
Chani Traube, M.D.
Abhishek Jaywant, Ph.D.
Jonathan Lee Baker, Ph.D.
Award or grant: NIH/NINDS: 1R01NS102646-01A1
This is a multi-center collaborative grant (Weill Cornell Medicine, Mount Sinai) that aims to carry out a longitudinal study of the mechanisms underlying executive attention impairment after traumatic brain...
Award or Grant: National Institutes of Health (NIH)/Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Nanotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative
This is a multi-center collaborative grant (Weill Cornell Medicine, Stanford University, Harvard University/Spaulding...
Recognizing the specific and unmet global need for expanding research in pediatric brain injury outcomes, Dr. Shah has co-directed (with Dr. Stacy Suskauer) the creation of the Pediatric Brain Injury Consortium since 2019 (eight pediatric rehabilitation...
Acquired brain injury is a leading cause of death and disability among children and adolescents, and cognitive impairment is the most persistent and distressing sequela. For children with co-occurring impairment of oromotor, oculomotor, gross and fine motor function, assessment of emerging and residual cognitive...
The overall objective of this project is to determine the functional integrity of the anterior forebrain mesocircuit (medial frontal cortex, striatum and central thalamus) using a novel tool [11C] flumazenil (FMZ). FMZ binding in the brain reports both neuronal structural and functional...
