| | Staff Scientists and Clinicians
| Richard Coppola, D.Sc. |
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Dr.
Coppola received his degree in Electrical Engineering
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he
began electrophysiology research in the Communications
Biophysics Laboratory. He has a Doctor of Science degree
from the George Washington University. For the past thirty
years he has been involved with Neuropsychiatric research
at the NIMH. He has received numerous awards including
the Commissioned Corps Commendation and the Outstanding
Service Medals for innovations in brain imaging research,
as well as the NIH Directors Award. Dr. Coppola was one
of the pioneers of high spatial resolution EEG analysis
and has been responsible for refinements in radial current
density methods, cortical imaging and the application
of task activation strategies in functional neuroimaging.
He founded the EEGSYS Consortium, an international group
of laboratories utilizing EEG analysis methods developed
in his lab.
In addition to his appointment in the Clinical
Brain Disorders Branch, Dr. Coppola is Director of
the NIMH MEG Core Facility. |
| Research Interests |
Dr. Coppola’s research interests are centered on the investigation of brain mechanisms underlying
cognitive behavior and its dysfunction. The flood of brain imaging studies from advances in fMRI has
resulted in ever more subtly defined brain areas. Each refinement of task variation seems to yield an
increasing fractionalization of brain related areas. This differentiation is important for understanding
associated cognitive dysfunction in patient groups; however, it does not necessarily yield more
knowledge into the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. The ability to investigate the temporal
dynamics of underlying brain activity is necessary to make further progress. Information processing or
transfer in the brain is not necessarily associated with increased neural activity. Information processing
may well be related to the phasic dynamics of neural activity. It may be that the hypo- and hyper-function,
inefficiency, and varying activation patterns seen in patient groups reflects underlying network pathology.
temporal resolution of electrophysiology allows the investigation the associated network dynamics and
better understanding the information flow between areas, the binding problem, neural codes, and their
relation to behavior.
Within CBDB Dr. Coppola is responsible for the electrophysiology component of the Sibling project.
He has written the MEMTASK, WMT, and CRT/RT and tasks used both in the sib project and with the
fMRI group. Dr. Coppola is also involved with both structural and functional MRI imaging. He has been
responsible for methodological research with landmark analyses and other morphometric techniques and
in analysis system design for anatomical studies. His collaboration with the fMRI group includes task
design and implementation as well as consultation on signal processing methodology. Dr. Coppola has
also used his image processing background to tackle the basic methodology and analysis of the Gene
Filter array experiments. |
| Representative Selected Recent Publications: |
- Bressler, SL, Coppola, R, Nakamura, RK: Episodic multi-regional cortical coherence at multiple frequencies during visual task performance, Nature, 366:153-156, 1993
- Jansma JM, Ramsey NF, Coppola R, Kahn RS: Specific versus nonspecific brain activity in a parametric N-back task, Neuroimage, 1112:688-697, 2000
- Callicott, JH, Bertolino, A, Mattay, VS, Langheim, FJP, Duyn, J, Coppola, R, Goldberg, TE, Weinberger, DR: Physiological dysfunction of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia revisited, Cereb Cortex, 10:1078-1092, 2000
- Winterer G, Egan MF, Radler T, Hyde T, Coppola R, Weinberger DR: An association between reduced interhemispheric EEG coherence in the temporal lobe and genetic risk for schizophrenia, Schizophr Res. 49(1-2):129-43, 2001
- Fife, AA, Vrbe, J, Coppola, R: A 275 channel whole-cortex MEG system. Proceedings 13th International Conference on Biomagnetism, 912-915, 2002
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