Helen Gallagher
Helen is a Senior Lecturer in Radiography at Glasgow Caledonian University and has practiced in both clinical and research positions, specialising in neuroradiography and more specifically MRI and functional imaging. In 2002 she successfully completed a PhD in cognitive neuropsychology at University College London. This research was an investigation of the neural correlates of social cognitive abilities using functional imaging techniques and involved the development and implementation of cognitive tasks to study the perception of biological motion, intentional behaviour and emotional expression. This work revealed a network of brain regions involved in specific social cognitive abilities that have been found to be impaired in children with Autism and patients with Schizophrenia. The aim of this research was to characterise the functions and connectivity of these regions in the hope of better understanding the underlying causes of these disorders.
Current research activities include a) examining the perception of emotional biological movement in patients with unipolar depression using fMRI. This too is a collaborative project with the universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde. A future objective of this project is to apply this paradigm clinically to predict treatment response in patients with this disorder. b) the investigation of impaired visuomotor transformation pathways in children and adults with periventricular white matter damage using fMRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in collaboration with the Department of Vision Sciences. A common aim of these projects is to broaden the clinical applicability of fMRI in order to influence patient management by facilitating earlier diagnosis or predict treatment outcomes. Other interests include structural MR and DT imaging in the investigation of personality disorders associated with acute brain injury.
Helen is currently supervising 3 PhD projects. The topics for these are:
- Cognitive visual dysfunction in children with hydrocephalus.
- Executive functions in multiple sclerosis.
- The processing of biological motion patterns in adults with high-functioning autism.
|
|