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Alfonso Nieto-Castanon

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Alfonso Nieto-Castanon
Alfonso Nieto-Castanon in 2016
BornSeptember 1972
Spain
Alma materUniversidad de Valladolid, Boston University
Known forfunctional neuroimaging, subject-specific ROIs, connectome, CONN
Scientific career
FieldsComputational neuroscience, Neuroimaging
InstitutionsBoston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisorFrank H. Guenther

Alfonso Nieto-Castanon (born September 1972) is a Spanish computational neuroscientist and developer of computational neuroimaging analysis methods and tools. He is a visiting researcher at the Boston University College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences,[1] and research affiliate at MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research.[2] His research focuses on the understanding and characterization of human brain dynamics underlying mental function.

Early life and education

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Nieto-Castanon was born in Spain in 1972.[3] He was part of the first Spanish team to participate in the International Physics Olympiad in 1990[citation needed]. He went to college at the Universidad de Valladolid from 1991 to 1995 and earned a B.S./M.S. in Telecommunications Engineering. In 1998 he pursued graduate studies in Boston University Cognitive and Neural Systems Department and was awarded a research training fellowship from Fundación Séneca/Cedetel, and a graduate research fellowship from Boston University. He received a Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience in 2004.[4]

Contributions to science

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ROI analyses

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In some of his early work Nieto-Castanon helped develop novel methods for region of interest (ROI) analyses of fMRI data,[5] with a focus on multivariate techniques and the use of subject-specific ROIs, where regions of interest are defined differently for each person based on common anatomical or functional landmarks.[6][7] Subject-specific ROIs allowed researchers to probe the limits of the functional localization hypotheses common in neuroimaging, and better understand the spatial and functional specificity of different brain areas.[8]

Brain-computer interfaces

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In collaboration with Boston University's Neural Prosthesis Laboratory, Nieto-Castanon helped build a Neuroprosthetic device for real-time speech synthesis.[9] This system was designed to allow patients with locked-in syndrome to produce speech by decoding signals from a neurotrophic electrode implanted in the brain.[10][11]

Functional connectivity

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Nieto-Castanon also developed multiple influential mathematical and computational techniques for functional connectivity analyses,[12] with a special emphasis on the robust estimation of functional connectivity measures in the presence of subject-motion and physiological noise sources.[13] In 2011 he developed CONN to integrate and facilitate best practices in functional connectivity studies.[14] CONN included a combination of novel methods such as multivariate connectivity analyses and dynamic connectivity estimation, together with multiple well known techniques such as psycho-physiological interactions, graph analyses, or independent component analyses. His software has been since widely adopted in the field[15][16][17][18][19] and it is now regularly used in functional connectivity studies, with over 900 citations during 2021 alone[20]

Nieto-Castanon has given numerous courses and lectures worldwide[21][22][23][24][25] and his work has been cited in over 8000 refereed journal articles to date.[26]

International competitions

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Beyond his research, Nieto-Castanon is also recognized for his participation in international programming and data-analysis competitions. Programming in Matlab, Nieto-Castanon won in 2009 and in 2011 the Color Bridge and Vines MathWorks collaborative-programming competitions.[27][28] He was also the winner in 2011 of the Microsoft Kinect video gesture identification competition,[29][30] obtained second place at the Marinexplore and Cornell University Whale Detection audio classification challenge,[31] took first prize in 2013 Genentech's Flu Forecasting predictive model competition,[32] and placed second in MathWorks 2014 bin packing optimization competition.[33] In 2013 Nieto-Castanon was ranked as the third best data-scientist in Kaggle,[34][35] and he has been ranked as the best Matlab programmer in MathWorks Cody games for seven consecutive years between 2013 and 2019.[36]

References

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  1. ^ [1][2] Boston University
  2. ^ [3] Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  3. ^ Dissertation VITA
  4. ^ Nieto-Castanon, A. (2004). An investigation of articulatory-acoustic relationships in speech production. Boston University
  5. ^ Nieto-Castanon, Alfonso; Ghosh, Satrajit S.; Tourville, Jason A.; Guenther, Frank H. (August 2003). "Region of interest based analysis of functional imaging data". NeuroImage. 19 (4): 1303–1316. doi:10.1016/s1053-8119(03)00188-5. PMID 12948689. S2CID 7230124.
  6. ^ Nieto-Castañón, Alfonso; Fedorenko, Evelina (2012-11-15). "Subject-specific functional localizers increase sensitivity and functional resolution of multi-subject analyses". NeuroImage. 63 (3): 1646–1669. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.065. PMC 3477490. PMID 22784644.
  7. ^ Fedorenko, Evelina; Hsieh, Po-Jang; Nieto-Castañón, Alfonso; Whitfield-Gabrieli, Susan; Kanwisher, Nancy (August 2010). "New method for fMRI investigations of language: defining ROIs functionally in individual subjects". Journal of Neurophysiology. 104 (2): 1177–1194. doi:10.1152/jn.00032.2010. PMC 2934923. PMID 20410363.
  8. ^ Fedorenko, Evelina (2021). "The early origins and the growing popularity of the individual-subject analytic approach in human neuroscience". Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 40: 105–112. doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.02.023. hdl:1721.1/138409.2. S2CID 232265279.
  9. ^ US 10553199, Guenther, Frank Harold & Nieto-Castanon, Alfonso, "Low-dimensional real-time concatenative speech synthesizer", published 2020-02-04, assigned to Trustees of Boston University 
  10. ^ “Brain-Powered Technology May Help Locked-In Patients” PBS NewsHour, October 14, 2011, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/10/brain-powered-technology-may-help-locked-in-patients.html Archived 2014-01-22 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ Keim, Brandon. "Wireless Brain-to-Computer Connection Synthesizes Speech". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2023-08-11.
  12. ^ Nieto-Castanon, A. (2020). Handbook of functional connectivity Magnetic Resonance Imaging methods in CONN. Hilbert Press.
  13. ^ Chai, Xiaoqian J.; Castañón, Alfonso Nieto; Ongür, Dost; Whitfield-Gabrieli, Susan (2012-01-16). "Anticorrelations in resting state networks without global signal regression". NeuroImage. 59 (2): 1420–1428. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.08.048. PMC 3230748. PMID 21889994.
  14. ^ Whitfield-Gabrieli, Susan; Nieto-Castanon, Alfonso (2012). "Conn: a functional connectivity toolbox for correlated and anticorrelated brain networks". Brain Connectivity. 2 (3): 125–141. doi:10.1089/brain.2012.0073. PMID 22642651.
  15. ^ Dixon, Matthew L.; de la Vega, Alejandro; Mills, Caitlin; Andrews-Hanna, Jessica; Spreng, R. Nathan; Cole, Michael W.; Christoff, Kalina (2018). "Heterogeneity within the frontoparietal control network and its relationship to the default and dorsal attention networks". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (7): E1598–E1607. Bibcode:2018PNAS..115E1598D. doi:10.1073/pnas.1715766115. PMC 5816169. PMID 29382744.
  16. ^ Vatansever, D.; Menon, D. K.; Manktelow, A. E.; Sahakian, B. J.; Stamatakis, E. A. (2015). "Default Mode Dynamics for Global Functional Integration". Journal of Neuroscience. 35 (46): 15254–15262. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2135-15.2015. PMC 4649001. PMID 26586814.
  17. ^ Boes, Aaron D.; Prasad, Sashank; Liu, Hesheng; Liu, Qi; Pascual-Leone, Alvaro; Caviness, Verne S.; Fox, Michael D. (2015). "Network localization of neurological symptoms from focal brain lesions". Brain. 138 (10): 3061–3075. doi:10.1093/brain/awv228. PMC 4671478. PMID 26264514.
  18. ^ Demertzi, Athena; Antonopoulos, Georgios; Heine, Lizette; Voss, Henning U.; Crone, Julia Sophia; De Los Angeles, Carlo; Bahri, Mohamed Ali; Di Perri, Carol; Vanhaudenhuyse, Audrey; Charland-Verville, Vanessa; Kronbichler, Martin; Trinka, Eugen; Phillips, Christophe; Gomez, Francisco; Tshibanda, Luaba; Soddu, Andrea; Schiff, Nicholas D.; Whitfield-Gabrieli, Susan; Laureys, Steven (2015). "Intrinsic functional connectivity differentiates minimally conscious from unresponsive patients". Brain. 138 (9): 2619–2631. doi:10.1093/brain/awv169. PMID 26117367.
  19. ^ Dodhia, Sonam; Hosanagar, Avinash; Fitzgerald, Daniel A.; Labuschagne, Izelle; Wood, Amanda G.; Nathan, Pradeep J.; Phan, K Luan (2014). "Modulation of Resting-State Amygdala-Frontal Functional Connectivity by Oxytocin in Generalized Social Anxiety Disorder". Neuropsychopharmacology. 39 (9): 2061–2069. doi:10.1038/npp.2014.53. PMC 4104324. PMID 24594871.
  20. ^ Google Scholar CONN references
  21. ^ Harvard/MGH courses
  22. ^ Neurometrika courses
  23. ^ Harvard/MGH courses
  24. ^ University of Cincinnati & CHMC
  25. ^ BCBL
  26. ^ Google Scholar Nieto-Castanon profile
  27. ^ Matlab contest Hall of Fame
  28. ^ Saez, Juan Manuel. "Alfonso Nieto Castanon gana por segunda vez este concurso de programacion online de MathWorks". Developers TI.
  29. ^ Byrne, Ciara (December 12, 2011). "Kaggle launches competition to help Microsoft Kinect learn new gestures". VentureBeat. Retrieved 13 December 2011.
  30. ^ Kaggle Microsoft Kinect competition
  31. ^ Marlow, Jeffrey (February 12, 2013). "Wanted: Right Whale Caller ID". Wired.
  32. ^ "Join the team". Kaggle newsletter. Archived from the original on 2016-04-23.
  33. ^ "Packing Santa's Sleigh". MathWorks Blogs. March 21, 2014.
  34. ^ "Google buys Kaggle and its gaggle of AI geeks". CNET. 2017-03-08. Retrieved 2018-06-01.
  35. ^ Kaggle Nieto-Castanon profile
  36. ^ Gulley, Ned (January 29, 2014). "Cody interview:Alfonso Nieto-Castanon". MathWorks Blogs.
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