Principle Investigator


Richard D. King, M.D, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Neurology
UT Southwestern Medical Center

Education:
B.S. Bioengineering, 1994, Texas A&M University
Ph.D. Neuroscience, 2000, Baylor College of Medicine
M.D. 2002, Baylor College of Medicine

Primary Research Interests:

Alzheimer’s disease, Neuroimaging

Despite decades of intense research, the brain is still the least understood organ in the human body. Dualist arguments not withstanding, everything we experience and perceive in our mind resides within the three-pound mass of tissue encased in our cranium. There are three important questions Dr. King hopes to address in his career. First, what are the key principles by which our brains work? Second, how do these principles connect brains and minds? Third, how can we bring these exciting discoveries to bear on human illnesses, especially those diseases affecting cognition?

Dr. King’s clinical focus is primarily on Alzheimer’s disease for both personal and professional reasons. On a personal level, the disease has affected multiple members of his family. Indeed, Alzheimer’s dementia will affect an increasing number of Americans as the number of cases is expected to rise to over 14 million by the year 2040. He believes that the recent advances in neuroimaging technology will lead to dramatic improvement in early diagnosis and facilitate the development of new treatment modalities.

The goals of his current research are to develop a new method for quantifying changes in the shape of the human brain as a result of degenerative disease processes, and then to relate these shape changes to the clinical assessment of the disease. Ideally, such a method could aid in both disease diagnosis and in following the progression of disease.

Research Assistants

Teresa George, B.S.
Education:
B.S. Neuroscience, 2007, University of Texas at Dallas

Primary Research Interests:

Aging diseases, particularly Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and the use of modern technology such as MRI to find out the signs of these degenerative diseases at the earlier stages and hopefully slow down the degenerative processes that are occurring.

Email: Anuh.George@UTSouthwestern.edu

Tina Jeon, B.A., M.S.
Education:
B.A. History, 2006, Pepperdine University
M.S. Cognition and Neuroscience, 2008, University of Texas at Dallas

Primary Research Interests:

Tina is interested in methods to quantify cortical neurodegeneration using neuroimaging initiatives. Using volumetric methods, we can perhaps catch dementia in its infancy, before clinical symptoms appear.

Email: Tina.Jeon@UTSouthwestern.edu

Collaborators

John Hart, M.D.

Medical Science Director University of Texas at Dallas
Jane and Bud Smith Distinguished Chair
Cecil Green Distinguished Chair
Professor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Joint appointment in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Denise Park, Ph.D.

T.Boone Pickens Distinguished Chair in Clinical Brain Science
Professor of Behavioral and Brain Science
UT Regents’ Research Scholar

Teddy Youn, B.A.
Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellow '07-'08
North Texas TBI Research Center
UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

Education:
B.A. Biology, 2002, Brown University
M.D. 2009, Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University

Primary Research Interests: Traumatic brain injury, Diffusion Tensor Tractography

Email: teddy.youn@utsouthwestern.edu