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| Allen R. Braun, M.D., Senior Investigator |
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Allen R. Braun received a B.A. in English Literature from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.D. from Rush Medical College in Chicago, where he also completed a residency in Neurology. His postdoctoral training was at the NIH Clinical Center in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and then at the Clinical Center Department of Nuclear Medicine, where he completed an additional residency in Nuclear Medicine with an emphasis on PET imaging. He is board certified Neurology and Nuclear medicine. Since 1994 he has been Chief of the Language Section, VSLB, NIDCD where he uses neuroimaging methods to study the relationships between brain and language in normal subjects and patients with neurological disorders that affect speech, voice and language.
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Staff:
- Trent Bradberry, Student, Contractor bradberryt@nidcd.nih.gov
- Walter Carr, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Special Volunteer carrw@nidcd.nih.gov
- Michelle Costanzo, Student, Contractor michelle.costnazo@gmail.com
- Therese Kling, B.S., Student, Contractor klingt@nidcd.nih.gov
- Joseph McArdle, Ph.D., Postdoctoral IRTA Fellow mcardle@nidcd.nih.gov
- Jed Meltzer, Ph.D., Postdoctoral IRTA Fellow meltzerj@nidcd.nih.gov
- Dante Picchioni, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Special Volunteer picchionid@nidcd.nih.gov
- Bruce Swett, M.S., Predoctoral IRTA Fellow swettb@nidcd.nih.gov
- Torri Wilson, B.S., Technician WilsonT1@nidcd.nih.gov
- Jiang Xu, M.D., Ph.D., Fogarty Postdoctoral Fellow xujiang@nidcd.nih.gov
- Guang Zheng, Contractor xhenggu@nidcd.nih.gov
Research Interests:
The mission of our Section is to understand how language is instantiated in the brain, how brain-language relationships are interrupted by disorders that affect the ability to communicate, and how these disorders can be treated. We use a combination of multiple imaging modalities - hemodynamic methods (PET and fMRI) complemented by electrophysiological (EEG/ERP and magnetoencephalography) and PET radiochemical tracer techniques - to this end.
We investigate both language production and comprehension since disorders affecting speech and language typically have a significant impact on both and how the brain processes language cannot be completely understood by studying either in isolation. We study language at multiple levels, from its elementary perceptual and motor features to higher level linguistic processing. But we are particularly interested in more complex, real-world language use because this ecologically valid condition is often the only context in which symptoms of many language disorders present.
Imaging paradigms developed in control subjects constitute the tools with which we study neurological disorders that affect speech, voice and language. These include deafness and central auditory processing impairments as well as Parkinson's disease and developmental stuttering, disorders that reflect pathology at the borderland between motor and cognitive-linguistic function.
Multimodal imaging of recovery of function in post-stroke aphasia has become a central focus of activity in our Section. We study the central correlates of neuroplastic reorganization and repair in aphasic patients; these studies are complemented by the use of a rodent stroke model in which MRI, electrophysiological and neurochemical investigations help us to interpret the results obtained in humans and design effective therapeutic interventions.
Members of our Section are also interested in music processing (particularly the relationships between music and language in the brain), and in sleep (the effect of sleep deprivation on language performance as well as the neural architecture of sleep itself).
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Selected Recent Publications:
Gil-da-Costa, R., Martin, A., Lopes, M., Monica Munoz , M., Fritz, J., Braun, A.R. (2006) Species-specific calls activate homologues of Broca's and Wernicke's areas in the macaque, Nat Neurosci 9(8), 1064-70.
Kemeny, S., Xu, Jiang, Park, G., Hosey, L., Braun, A.R. (2006) Temporal Dissociation of Early Lexical Access and Articulation Using a Delayed Naming Task -- An fMRI Study, Cereb Cortex 16(4), 587-95.
Xu, J., Kemeny, S., Park, G., Frattali, C, Braun, A.R. (2005) Language in context: Emergent features of word, sentence and narrative comprehension, Neuroimage 25(3), 1002-15.
Schulz, G., Varga, M., Ludlow, C., Braun, A.R. (2005) Functional Neuroanatomy of Human Vocalization; An H20-15 PET Study, Cereb Cortex 5(12), 1835-47.
Braun AR, Guillemin A, Hosey L, Varga M (2001) The neural organization of discourse: an H2 15O-PET study of narrative production in English and American sign language, Brain 124(Pt 10), 2028-44.
All Selected Publications
Contact Information:
Dr. Allen R. Braun
Chief, Language Section
Voice, Speech and Language Branch, NIDCD
Building 10, Room 8S235A
10 Center Drive
Bethesda, MD 20892-1770
Telephone: (301) 402-1497 (office),
(301) 402-1497 (laboratory),
(301) 594-5274 (fax)
Email: brauna@nidcd.nih.gov
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