Laura Lewis

About Laura Lewis
Laura Lewis is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. Her research develops multimodal approaches for imaging the human brain, and applies them to study the brain networks that regulate sleep, and the consequences of sleep for brain function. She completed her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at MIT, where she studied neural circuit mechanisms of sleep and anesthesia. She then conducted postdoctoral work at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, where she used new fast imaging techniques to image subsecond brain dynamics in humans. Her research has been recognized by awards such as the Society for Neuroscience Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award, the One Mind Rising Star Award, the Searle Scholar Award, the Sloan Fellowship, and the Pew Scholar Award.

Watch Laura Lewis’ NPC Symposium talk below.

Interested in learning more? Check out the Q&A session:

The Lewis Lab
Learn more about the Lewis Lab here.

Imaging the sleeping brain
Sleep is essential for cognition and maintenance of healthy brain function. Our research uses fast multimodal neuroimaging to identify the neural circuits controlling sleep and the consequences of sleep for brain physiology. We found that fast fMRI can track hemodynamics on subsecond timescales, and used simultaneous fast fMRI and EEG to measure neural dynamics in the human brain during sleep. In addition, we developed an approach to image cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow, and found a coherent pattern of coupled electrophysiological, hemodynamic, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) dynamics that appears during non-rapid eye movement sleep. Together, these studies illustrate new potential for fast multimodal neuroimaging techniques, and identify neurophysiological dynamics unique to the sleeping brain.