Heather Shappell
Wake Forest University, NC·Mathematics & Statistics·Early-career
The brain works as a network: regions coordinate their activity, and the pattern of who talks to whom can change over seconds to minutes. Most studies of brain connectivity average these patterns across an entire scan, which can hide meaningful moment-to-moment changes.
- Fields
Mathematics & Statistics
Neuroscience
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
biostatistics
neuroimaging statistics
dynamic functional connectivity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2027
What they work on
- Develop a unified statistical framework that estimates whole-brain functional networks from fMRI and how those networks change over seconds to minutes during a scan.
- Build methods that account for variables of interest and head-motion artifacts while estimating dynamic brain connectivity.
- Allow individual-level estimates of brain network dynamics so that differences between people, such as those relevant to Alzheimer's disease, can be studied.
More about the research
Tracking these changes accurately matters for understanding normal brain function and disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, and could help find early warning signs.
Why it matters
Better tools for tracking how brain networks change over time could help researchers identify biomarkers for brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. Such biomarkers could, in turn, inform earlier prevention and treatment. Neuroscientists and clinicians studying fMRI data would gain methods that handle head motion and differences between individuals.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Stephen Wilson
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Psychology
Examine whether moment-to-moment changes in how separated the default mode and executive control networks are predict the risk of a smoking lapse, using an fMRI lapse task in adults after 12 hours without nicotine.
Itamar Kahn
Columbia University, NY·Neuroscience
Chart how brain network organization, especially system segregation, changes across the mouse lifespan by repeatedly scanning the same awake mice with resting-state fMRI from 3 to 21 months of age.
Muriah D Wheelock
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Neuroscience
Compare the spatial and temporal patterns of brain development from birth to age three with patterns of aging and Alzheimer degeneration, using harmonized MRI datasets (eLABE, Baby Connectome Project, ADNI, SORTOUT-AB, HABS-HD) to test the 'first in last out' hypothesis.
The school
Wake Forest University: 27 labs on PI Pages, $345M a year on research, 54 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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