Endowed Chair in Behavioral Brain Imaging
College of Arts and Sciences
Brendan E. Depue, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in UofL’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. He is a cognitive neuroscientist who uses multiple imaging methodologies to investigate the functional-neuroanatomical substrates underlying inhibitory and cognitive control and how this is organized in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Dr. Depue uses both functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the brain’s response to certain behavioral challenges. In his previous research and training, he examined neural mechanisms involved in inhibitory influence in the interface between emotion and memory.
Dr. Depue is director of the NeuroImaging Laboratory of Cognitive Affective and Motoric Processes (NILCAMP). NILCAMP uses multiple neuroimaging methodologies to understand the involvement and organization of the PFC in connection to older phylogenetic brain circuitries that enable humans to control and regulate internal and external behavior.
Current projects involve:
- Using both Voxel- and Surface-based cortical morphometery to understand how anatomical features, as assessed by sMRI, impact individual differences in behavior and functional activity, as assessed by fMRI.
- How surface/shape volumetric analyses of subcortical regions relate to cortical morphometric features.
- Using diffusion tensor imaging to understand the relationship between the integrity of white matter tracts that underlie brain regions known to form functionally connected circuits. That is, how anatomical connectivity predicts functional connectivity.
- Refining theoretical models of inhibitory regulation of memory, emotion and motor response using the methodology described above.
- Investigating how these theoretically and empirically derived models can help inform our understanding of dysfunctional inhibitory regulation in psychiatric populations, such as individuals with ADHD and anxiety and mood disorders (e.g., PTSD).
Dr. Depue uses his research to formulate functional-anatomical neural models highlighting interactions between the PFC, the hippocampus (episodic memory), the amygdala (emotional/physiological response) and the basal ganglia (motor, working memory updating). These models provide a more specific account of the interactions of such brain regions to help isolate where dysfunction may arise in clinical populations.
Dr. Depue received PhDs in Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2009. He joined the UofL faculty in 2014.