Dr. Arun Bokde

Arun Bokde is Associate Professor in Neuroimaging in the Discipline of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, at Trinity College Dublin. He leads the Cognitive Systems Group, is a principal investigator in the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (TCIN), and a member of the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI). His initial appointment at Trinity College Dublin was as SFI Stokes Lecturer in Biostatistical Imaging. Arun Bokde is the coordinator of the consortium NETHATE (https://nethate-itn.eu) funded by EU-H2020 Marie Sk"odowska-Curie Actions. The project he leads is to investigate the neural underpinnings of hate. He is a member of the multi-centre consortium Imaging in Genetics (IMAGEN), a study of high-risk behaviors and mental disorders in adolescence. In addition, he is a member in the Neonatal and Children"s Brain Consortium Ireland (https://nbci.ie), focused on research in the neonatal brain and neonatal brain injury. Before coming to Trinity College Dublin he was a Research Scientist at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany; and previously he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National Institute on Aging and at the National Institute of Mental Health, both at the National Institutes of Health (USA). His first post-doctoral position was at Northwestern University (USA). He obtained his PhD degree at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published widely on the risk factors that lead to the development of mental health disorders in young and older populations.

  Age related diseases   Ageing, memory and other cognitive processes   Ageing, stroke, dementia   Alzheimer's disease   Biostatistical methods   Development, prevention and treatment of mental disease or disorder   Human Learning and Memory   Imaging Techniques   Imaging, image processing   Neurodegeneration   Neurogenetics   Neuropharmacology   Neuropsychology   Psychiatry   Vision

Arun Bokde investigates how large-scale brain networks function and how they are associated with both normal cognition, such as memory and attention, and breakdowns that lead to brain disorders. There are two populations of interest, young people and older people. Bokde uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activation during visual perceptual tasks, as well as working memory tasks in persons with mild cognitive impairment, patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), and healthy participants. These studies provide an understanding of how disease affects not only memory networks, but also perceptual processes in the brain. Recent findings were the basis of a new approach to testing AD-related drugs. In addition, Bokde has investigated the structural integrity of brain networks using diffusion imaging in combination with tractography in the limbic system, a network associated with memory function and profoundly affected in patients with AD. Bokde has also led an international project to develop training resources for the application of neuroimaging to the diagnostic process of AD patients, as well as developing resources for patients and their families to gain a better understanding of the disease. Bokde is co-PI (Ireland) for the the IMAGEN study, which is the first multicentre functional and structural genetic-neuroimaging study of a cohort of 2000 +14 year old adolescents. Cognitive, behavioural, clinical and neuroimaging data from the adolescents and their families and teachers have been gathered and the participants have been followed-up for 9 years - the third follow-up investigation is on-going. Bokde is investigating how stress modulates the development of brain networks, both within the thin cortical grey matter layer and the white matter regions that contain the 'cables' of the brain networks. The studies have been until now cross-sectional in nature and with new longitudinal data Bokde will start investigation of the interaction among stress, biological and genetic factors contributing to mental health disorders. He has close, long-standing collaborations with clinicians at St James's Hospital, Tallaght Hospital, and St Patrick's University Hospital. The collaborations enhance the communication and translation of research into the clinical context as well as feedback into research activities.