The International Center for Primate Brain Research (ICPBR) welcomes Dr. Amirsaman (Amir) Sajad as its newest Principal Investigator. Dr. Sajad will establish and direct the Laboratory of Computations of Cognition and Control (C3),where his interdisciplinary research bridges systems neuroscience and cognitive psychology with the goal to discover the building blocks of cognition and their biomarkers and translate this knowledge to mental health.
The C3 Lab will specifically investigate the neural mechanisms of cognitive control in dynamic environments – how the brain monitors our actions / decisions and their consequences, and learns from them and adjusts future actions /decisions. These functions are fundamental to cognition and disrupted in major neuropsychiatric disorders including Schizophrenia and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Dr. Sajad’s approach integrates multi-scale techniques: EEG and behavioral studies in both humans and non-human primates (NHP), and high-density multi-areal neural recordings with layer-resolution and causal interventions in NHPs. His lab will employ cognitive visuomotor tasks validated across species, and of translational value to mental health diagnosis. His research will also involve computational modeling to establish a rigorous link between inter- and intra-areal neural dynamics to EEG biomarkers of cognitive control.
Dr. Sajad earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience (With Distinction) from York University (Canada), and continued his postdoctoral research – supported by the Canadian CIHR fellowship – at Vanderbilt under the supervision of Jeffrey Schall. He later continued as a Research Assistant Professor there, before he joined ICPBR. His work on performance monitoring and cognitive control has been published in premier journals, including Nature Neuroscience, Nature Communications, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and the Journal of Neuroscience.