Alexander Cohen

Alexander Cohen, MD, PhD

Instructor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School

Research Focus

Identifying treatment targets for symptoms in Autism Spectrum Disorder by studying cohorts with lesion-induced symptoms.

Brief Research Description

The Cohen Laboratory of Translational Neuroimaging specializes in identifying the circuits underlying symptoms common in autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions with a goal of direct translation into possible targets for noninvasive treatment modalities, e.g., TMS and/or fMRI-based neurofeedback. This involves 1) Network analysis of cohorts with strokes, tubers, tumor resections, etc… who develop a particular symptom, 2) Prospective neuroimaging of patients with neurodevelopmental disorders affected by similar symptoms, and 3) Testing whether modulation of this circuit through non-invasive therapy, e.g., behavioral, fMRI-neurofeedback, or TMS-based intervention affects behavior. If successful, this line of research leads directly into therapeutic clinical trials.

Key Publications (PMCIDs)

Pediatric postoperative cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome follows outflow pathway lesions.
Albazron FM, Bruss J, Jones RM, Yock TI, Pulsifer MB, Cohen AL, Nopoulos PC, Abrams AN, Sato M, Boes AD.
Neurology. Oct 2019; 93(16) e1561-e1571. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000008326. Pubmed PMID: 31527284

Looking beyond the face area: Lesion network mapping of prosopagnosia.
Cohen AL, Soussand L, Corrow SL, Martinaud O, Barton JJS, Fox MD.
Brain. 2019. doi: 10.1093/brain/awz332. Epub 2019 Nov 19. PubMed PMID: 31740940

Cortical lesions causing loss of consciousness are anticorrelated with the dorsal brainstem.
Snider SB, Hsu J, Darby RR, Cooke D, Fischer D, Cohen AL, Grafman JH, Fox MD.
Human Brain Mapping. 2020; 1-12. doi: 10.1002/hbm.24892, Epub 2020 Jan 6. PubMed PMID: 31904898

Mapping Migraine to a Common Brain Network.
Burke MJ, Joutsa J, Cohen AL, Soussand L, Cooke D, Burstein R, Fox MD.
Brain. 2020. doi: 10.1093/brain/awz405, Epub 2020 Jan 9. PubMed PMID: 31919494

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