Cognitive Neurology

• Centers and Programs
• Labs

Division Chief: David Wolk, MD

Link to Penn Medicine Website - Cognitive: Dementia and Memory Disorders 

We have outstanding clinical expertise in the diagnosis of common as well as unusual forms of progressive cognitive difficulty, along with cutting edge therapeutic options.  Nationally-recognized care and translational research options are available at The Penn Memory Center, focusing on memory deficits, and The Frontotemporal Degeneration Center, focusing on younger-onset progressive cognitive and language impairments.  We offer investigational medications and diagnostic procedures such as advanced neuroimaging and genetic screens.  In addition, we provide the latest medication-free treatments such as non-invasive brain stimulation for cognitive impairment due to head injury, chronic stroke, and dementia, and behavioral therapies for speech and cognition.

Centers and Programs

• Penn Frontotemporal Degeneration (FTD) Center
• Penn Memory Center (PMC)
• Penn Translational Neuroscience Center (PTNC)
• GUIDE Dementia Care Program
• Penn Brain Stimulation, Translation,  Innovation, and Modulation Center (brainSTIM)

Labs

• Aguirre
  
  • This lab studies the cortical basis of visual function, both in normative representation and as altered by disease. A particular focus of work is how the structure of the eye gives rise to the properties of the visual pathway of the brain, and how this system is altered in ophthalmologic and neurologic disease.
• Detre
  • The research focuses on brain physiology and the use of functional imaging methods including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and optical imaging to study brain function in both healthy subjects and in patients with a variety of clinical disorders including stroke, epilepsy, neurodegenerative disease, traumatic brain injury, and migraine.
• Chatterjee
  • The lab is a part of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience within the University of Pennsylvania Neurology Department. The focus is on interactions between cognition, language, and the brain. The studies cover a diverse range of cognitive processes, including figurative and spatial language, event representation, aesthetics, and neuroethics. Much of the research focuses on differences in processing of patients with brain injury, compared with healthy adults.
• Hamilton/Coslett
  • The Laboratory for Cognition and Neural Stimulation is a cognitive neurology laboratory within the Neurology Department at the University of Pennsylvania. This lab primarily uses noninvasive brain stimulation techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to achieve two central aims: To investigate the neural bases of human cognition, and the exploration of brain plasticity and its modulation. Our research addresses a variety of topics in cognitive neuroscience, including perceptual-motor interactions, multisensory integration, language, time perception, and decision-making in patients who have experienced brain injury (e.g. stroke) and healthy young adults.
• McMillan
  • Corey McMillan's lab aims to develop robust biomarkers that can be used to better diagnose neurodegenerative diseases, accelerate drug discovery of disease-modifying agents, and to define essential clinical trial endpoint measures. This clinical-translation research program focuses on two classes of neurodegenerative proteinopathies including the misfolded tau protein that contributes to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), primary age-related tauopathy (PART), and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), as well as the TDP-43 protein that contributes to a spectrum of FTLD and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). This lab emphasizes biologically-grounded hypotheses with novel analytic and multimodal approaches integrating MRI and PET imaging modalities with genomics and clinical datasets.
• Irwin
  • David Irwin is the PI of the Penn Digital Neuropathology Lab. He has dual training in cognitive neurology and neuropathology and his lab focuses on integrating human brain histopathology and molecular techniques with imaging methods to discover therapeutic targets and develop tissue-sensitive biomarkers to facilitate clinical trials for emerging therapies for FTD, LBD, AD and related disorders.
• Wolk
  • David Wolk’s research has focused on the cognitive neuroscience of memory decline associated with aging and Alzheimer’s Disease using techniques including behavioral testing, structural and functional MRI, and FDG and molecular PET imaging. Much of this work is also directed at examining biomarkers, including behavioral and neuroimaging, that differentiate healthy aging from the earliest transition to AD and their potential role in understanding disease mechanisms and incorporation into treatment trials. Another related thread of his work has been to better understand, classify and predict sources of heterogeneity in AD.