My lab studies the functioning of the human brain in health and disease using neuroimaging. My interest encompasses research on several aspects of stroke that could impact patient care – pathophysiology, therapies, recovery processes and outcomes.

Normal humans differ widely in their cognitive abilities, be it in the language, mathematics, visuospatial or social intelligence domains. Although this fact is widely recognized, the basis of this variation in normal subjects is not understood yet. We are conducting a research study to examine the neural basis of this variation in adult human subjects using magnetic resonance imaging. We are interested in studying how strength of connections between different parts of the brain relate to cognitive abilities.

As part of this study, we are collecting normative data from the adult Indian population for a battery of cognitive tests we are using. If you are between 18 and 55 years of age and completed a bachelor’s in India, we invite you to participate and contribute to our project by taking the test battery here in your spare time.

Stroke is the number one cause of major long-term disability, and in India, increased longevity and modern lifestyles have created a stroke “epidemic” in recent years. We expect to shortly start a study of stroke patients to give us detailed information on stroke types, and how patients fare in the long term after a stroke in India. We also hope to identify some of the important factors that affect recovery after stroke. This data is essential for planning public health interventions to combat the stroke epidemic, and to evaluate the effectiveness of our current medical care system in treating stroke.

Allopathic care for neurological disease is very limited, especially once disability has already occurred. Hence I am very interested in integrative approaches to care combining Ayurveda with Allopathy. We have an ongoing pilot study that is looking at the safety and efficacy of Ayurvedic treatment in stroke patients. We also have some ongoing projects trying to validate fundamental concepts in Ayurveda and understand them from a modern medical perspective.