Michael Yassa, M.A.
Ph.D. candidate, Neurobiology and Behavior, UC IrvineM.A., Psychological and Brain Sciences, 2005, Johns Hopkins University
B.A., Neuroscience, 2002, Johns Hopkins University
211 Qureshey Research Laboratory
University of California, Irvine
Irvine CA, 92697-3800
Tel: (949) 824-4230
Fax: (949) 824-2447
Email: myassa@uci.edu
I use fMRI to investigate the computations carried out by subregions of the medial temporal lobe in the course of healthy and impaired aging (e.g. Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease), as well as how various types of information such as novelty, familiarity and recency are represented in the medial temporal lobe. I am also actively involved in the development of new methods for processing and analysis of structural MRI, fMRI and diffusion tensor imaging data.
Download CV
Recent Peer-Reviewed Publications
- Yassa MA, Stark CEL (2008). Multiple Recognition-related signals in the medial temporal lobe. Hippocampus (in press).
- Yassa, M.A., Verduzco, G., Cristinzio C., Bassett, S. (2008) Altered fMRI activation during mental rotation in those at genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Neurology (in press).
- Cuzzocreo, J., Yassa, M.A., Verduzco, G., Honeycutt, N., Scott, D., Bassett, S. (2008) Effect of handedness on a verbal auditory memory fMRI task. Human Brain Mapping (in press).
- Bazin, P.L., Cuzzocreo, J.L., Yassa, M.A., Gandler, W., McAuliffe, M.J., Bassett, S.S., Pham, D.L. (2007) Volumetric neuroimage analysis extensions for the MIPAV software package. J Neurosci Methods 165(1):111-21.
- Bassett, S., Yousem, D., Cristinzio, C., Kusevic, I., Yassa, M.A., Caffo, B., Zeger, S. (2006) Familial risk for Alzheimer’s disease alters fMRI activation patterns. Brain 129: 1229-1239.
- Reading, S., Yassa, M.A., Dziorny, A., Gourley, L., Yallapragada, V., Rosenblatt, A., Margolis, R., Aylward, E., Brandt, J., Mori, S., van Zijl, P., Bassett, S., Ross, C. (2005) Regional white matter change in pre-symptomatic Huntington’s disease: a diffusion tensor imaging study. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 140(1): 55-62.
- Bassett, S., Kusevic, I., Cristinzio, C., Yassa, M.A., Avramopoulos, D., Yousem, D., Fallin, M. (2005) Brain activation in offspring of AD cases corresponds to 10q linkage. Annals of Neurology 58: 142-146.
Upcoming Poster Presentations
- Yassa, M.A., Albert, M.S., Gallagher, M., Stark, C.E.L. (2008) Functional MRI of hippocampal subfields in healthy aging and mild cognitive impairment. International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease (ICAD) and Alzheimer’s Imaging Consortium, Chicago, IL.
- Yassa, M.A., Albert, M.S., Gallagher, M., Stark, C.E.L. (2008) Neurocognitive aging and pattern separation in the dentate gyrus/CA3. Poster to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Washington, DC.
Miscellaneous
This Functional MRI User’s Guide covers the basics of MRI, BOLD signal dynamics, and fMRI analysis using SPM (The manual was written for SPM99 users, but can be easily adapted for newer versions of SPM). I used this guide in conjunction with lecture slides to teach a course on functional MRI for a couple of years at JHU. If you’re interested in the course, please contact me.
Feel free to visit my personal page for more miscallaneous stuff, although it has not been updated in a little while. I will eventually consolidate everything under one page (hopefully this one).