McGill FMHS 2023 Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship winner Alex Wiseman

Alex is a Postdoctoral Fellow with Professor Sylvain Baillet in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery. His research combines time-resolved recordings of brain activity with measures of neurochemistry, brain structure, and cognitive function to understand clinical variability in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Alex completed his PhD with Professor Tony Wilson at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in the United States, where he focused on neuroimaging of patients with age-related neurological disorders. As a Banting fellow, Alex will study a pattern of brain activity "slowing" in patients with PD. This slowing is the target of emerging therapeutics, but it is not currently clear whether it is a marker of clinical impairment or compensation. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings and detailed clinical profiles, Alex's work will determine the impact of this slowing on motor and cognitive function, and thereby provide essential clinical context to guide future research and interventions.