Duke Institute for Brain Sciences

My lab is involved in 3 areas of brain science:

1) We study the neurobiological mechanisms involved in extracting 3-dimensional information from visual input. These studies use fMRI and behavioral experiments to study sensory and perceptual transformations in occipital visual areas.

2) We use fMRI to identify critical language and motor brain areas as a diagnostic tool for treatment of patients undergoing brain surgery. Our research focusses on understanding which brain regions are essential to avoid functional deficits after surgery, and how to evaluate the reliability of fMRI in the context of brain tissue pathology.

3) We develop improved computational methods for behavioral control, real-time analysis, and robust image post-processing of fMRI experiments.

Ph.D., Washington University, St. Louis, Neural Science, 1988

B.S., Yale University, Physics, 1976

Voyvodic JT, Petrella JR, and Friedman AH (2009) “fMRI activation mapping as percentage of local excitation: Consistent presurgical motor maps without threshold adjustment”, J. Mag. Res. Imaging (in press).

Voyvodic JT. (2006). Activation mapping as a percentage of local excitation: fMRI stability within scans, between scans and across field strengths. Magn Reson Imaging 24(9):1249-1261.

Petrella JP, Shah LM, Harris KM, Friedman AH, George TM, Sampson JH, Pekala JS, and Voyvodic JT (2006). Preoperative Localization of Language and Motor Areas with Functional MRI: Impact upon Therapeutic Decision Making in Patients with Potentially Resectable Brain Tumors, Radiology 240:793-802.