Eduardo Sandoval

Eduardo is co-mentored by Robert T. Knight in the Department of Psychology and Michael DeWeese in the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience and the Department of Physics. In the Knight lab, Eduardo has been focusing on single unit activity within the anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and hippocampus during the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task and the Interval Timing Task, as well as gamma, theta, and beta oscillations in the microwire LFP.

In the DeWeese lab, Eduardo is currently developing a causal model of sparse coding for auditory nerve fibers. All of his research in the lab involves some temporal aspect, whether it be prediction of time series, or dynamical systems of the mind and brain.

Email: esandoval@berkeley.edu

Position: Neuroscience PhD candidate

Selected Publications: Hoy, C.W., Quiroga-Martinez, D.R., Sandoval, E. et al. Asymmetric coding of reward prediction errors in human insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Nat Commun 14, 8520 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-44248-1

Alexis Pracar

Alexis Pracar is a PhD student in cognitive neuroscience working under the supervision of Dr. Nina Dronkers and collaborating with Dr. Robert Knight. Her dissertation focuses on the neural mechanism that differentiates speech and song in patients with stroke-induced aphasia and patients with intracranial EEG. Alexis is interested in the neural architecture of language and the real time activity that supports it. She is also interested in the translation of science to wearable technologies and holds 3 issued US patents. She received her B.S. in public health from George Washington University in 2018.

Email: pracar@berkeley.edu

Position: Department of Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, PhD Candidate

Selected publications and patents: 

Pracar, Alexis L., Maria V. Ivanova, Amber Richardson, and Nina F. Dronkers. "A case of pure apraxia of speech after left hemisphere stroke: behavioral findings and neural correlates." Frontiers in Neurology 14 (2023): 1187399.

Ivanova, Maria V., Ioannis Pappas, Ben Inglis, Alexis L. Pracar, Timothy J. Herron, Juliana V. Baldo, Andrew S. Kayser, Mark D’Esposito, and Nina F. Dronkers. "Cerebral perfusion in post-stroke aphasia and its relationship to residual language abilities." Brain Communications 6, no. 1 (2024): fcad252.

Pracar, Alexis, and Shane Pracar. "Monitoring, tracking, and managing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease." U.S. Patent 9,959,775, issued May 1, 2018.

Pracar, Alexis, and Shane Pracar. "Intelligent progression monitoring, tracking, and management of Parkinson's disease." U.S. Patent 9,924,899, issued March 27, 2018.

Pracar, Alexis, and Shane Pracar. "Monitoring, tracking, and managing symptoms of autism spectrum disorder." U.S. Patent 9,924,900, issued March 27, 2018.

Mark Gorenstein

Mark is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. Prior to grad school, he was a research assistant on the Restoring Active Memory project at Dartmouth. Before then, he studied computer science and philosophy at Columbia.

Email: gorenstein@berkeley.edu

Position: Helen Wills Neuroscience PhD Candidate

Selected Publications:

Llorens A.†, Tzovara, A.†, Bellier, L. Bhaya-Grossman, I., Bidet-Caulet, A., Chang, W.K., Cross, Z.R., Dominguez-Faus, R., Flinker, A., Fonken, Y., Gorenstein, M., Holdgraf, C., Hoy, C.W., Ivanova, M.V., Jimenez, R.T, Jun, S., Kam, J. W. K., Kidd, C., Marcelle, E., Marciano, D., Martin, S., Myers, N.E., Ojala, K., Pinheiro-Chagas, P., Ries, S., Perry, A., Saez, I., Skelin, I., Slama, K., Staveland, B.R., Bassett, D.S., Buffalo, E.A., Fairhall, A.L., Kastner, S., Kopell, N.J., Lin, J.J., Nobre, A.C., Solbakk, A.K., Wallis, J.D., Wang, X.J., Yuval-Greenberg, S., Knight, R.T., Dronkers, N.F. (2021) Gender bias in academia: a lifetime problem that needs solutions. Neuron.

† These authors contributed equally to this work as first authors

‡ These authors contributed equally to this work as second authors

Brooke Staveland

Brooke is a Ph.D. student in neuroscience working under the co-supervision of Prof. Robert Knight and Prof. Ming Hsu. Most broadly, Brooke hopes to apply computational neuroimaging methods in order to improve mental health treatment and maintenance. Her dissertation research uses intracranial EEG and computational modeling to study the neurobiology of anxiety. In her pre-doctoral work, Brooke used statistical and machine learning methods to look for meaningful treatment groups across a wide range of mental health diagnoses. Brooke received her B.S. in mathematics from George Washington University and was awarded the NSF GRFP in 2021.

Email: bstavel@berkeley.edu

Position: Helen Wills Neuroscience PhD Candidate

Selected Publications:

Staveland, B.R†, Tozzi, L.†, Holt-Gosselin, B.†, Chesnut, M., Chang, S., Choi, D., Shiner, M., Wu, H., Sporns, O., Barch, D., Gotlib, I., Hastie, T., Kerr, A., Poldrack, R., Wandell, B., Wintermark, M., Williams, L.M. (2020) The human connectome project for disordered emotional states: protocol and rationale for a research domain criteria study of brain. Neuroimage.

Goldstein-Piekarski, A.N.†, Ball, T.M.†, Samara, Z.‡, Staveland, B.R.‡, Fleming, S.L.‡, Keller, A.S. ‡, Grisanzio, K.A.‡, Holt-Gosselin, B.‡, Ma, J., Williams, L.M. (2021) Deriving biotypes for depression and anxiety using clinic-ready brain circuit metrics. Biological Psychiatry.

Llorens A.†, Tzovara, A.†, Bellier, L. Bhaya-Grossman, I., Bidet-Caulet, A., Chang, W.K., Cross, Z.R., Dominguez-Faus, R., Flinker, A., Fonken, Y., Gorenstein, M., Holdgraf, C., Hoy, C.W., Ivanova, M.V., Jimenez, R.T, Jun, S., Kam, J. W. K., Kidd, C., Marcelle, E., Marciano, D., Martin, S., Myers, N.E., Ojala, K., Pinheiro-Chagas, P., Ries, S., Perry, A., Saez, I., Skelin, I., Slama, K., Staveland, B.R., Bassett, D.S., Buffalo, E.A., Fairhall, A.L., Kastner, S., Kopell, N.J., Lin, J.J., Nobre, A.C., Solbakk, A.K., Wallis, J.D., Wang, X.J., Yuval-Greenberg, S., Knight, R.T., Dronkers, N.F. (2021) Gender bias in academia: a lifetime problem that needs solutions. Neuron.

Keller, A.S., Leikauf J.E., Holt-Gosselin B, Staveland B.R., Williams L.M. (2019) Paying attention to attention in depression. Translational Psychiatry. Goldstein-Piekarski, A.N., Staveland, B.R., Ball, T.M., Yesavage, J., Korgaonkar, M.S., Williams, L.M. (2018). Intrinsic functional connectivity predicts remission on antidepressants: A randomized controlled trial to identify clinically applicable imaging biomarkers. Translational Psychiatry.

† These authors contributed equally to this work as first authors

‡ These authors contributed equally to this work as second authors