Jeremy D. Schmahmann, MD, FAAN, FANA, FANPA
Jeremy Schmahmann is Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, and Senior Clinical Neurologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital where he is Founding Director of the Ataxia Center, Director of the Laboratory for Neuroanatomy and Cerebellar Neurobiology, and a founding member of the Cognitive Behavioral Neurology Unit. Dr. Schmahmann received his medical degree with distinction at the University of Cape Town, completed residency in the Neurological Unit of the Boston City Hospital, and a postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Deepak Pandya in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Boston University School of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, American Neurological Association, and American Neuropsychiatric Association.
Dr. Schmahmann’s clinical and research efforts focus on the anatomical substrates of intellect and emotion, and the clinical neurology and basic science of the ataxias and other cerebellar disorders. He was awarded the Norman Geschwind Prize in 2000 from the American Academy of Neurology and the Behavioral Neurology Society for his pioneering work on the role of the cerebellum in cognition and emotion, and the description of the cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome and its neurobiological and theoretical underpinnings. He received the Distinguished Neurology Teacher Award from the American Neurological Association in 2008, and the Special Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching in 2013 from Harvard Medical School. He is past president of the Boston Society of Neurology and Psychiatry and the American Neuropsychiatric Association, on the Executive of the Society for Research on the Cerebellum and Ataxias, and a member of the Medical and Scientific Research Advisory Board of the National Ataxia Foundation and the Clinical Research Consortium for the Study of Cerebellar Ataxias.
Dr. Schmahmann’s full bio can be found here.
Dr. Schmahmann’s publications can be found here.
Contact info: 617-726-3216 | jschmahmann@mgh.harvard.edu
Jason MacMore
Jason MacMore received his BS from Boston University and came to the Schmahmann lab as a research assistant in 2002. He has worked in every aspect of the lab program over the years, from training monkeys in the lab’s collaboration with the Boston University Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, to charting sections of anatomical specimens in the study of corticopontine projections, and more recently in the recruitment and testing of research and clinical subjects for the range of studies on cognition and emotion in cerebellar disorders. He contributed a herculean effort in essentially hand-crafting voxel based morphometry using Photoshop in our study of the topography of the human pons derived from stroke patients (2004) and has been instrumental in facilitating the development of the Brief Ataxia Rating Scale version 1 (2009) and the version 2 that is in preparation – together with video analysis of the range of ataxia severity of gait, arms, legs, speech and eye movements that will shortly be available on YouTube for use by investigators around the world. Jason has become the go-to guy in the lab maintaining the 17 active IRB protocols (Institutional Review Board – of the Human Studies Committee of the MGJ). This is a critically important aspect of the lab’s clinical, research, and translation studies. Jason has recently become the Research Project Manager for the Schmahmann Lab.
Jason’s publications can be found here.
Contact info: 617-726-5060 | jmacmore@mgh.harvard.edu
Brigitte Jacoby
Brigitte is a clinical research coordinator who graduated in May 2019 from Dickinson College with a BS in Neuroscience and a BS in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. Recently, her work on the development of fetal breathing movements in mice was published in Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology. Her research interests include the underlying pathology of neurological disorders and studying changes in cognition. In the Ataxia Center, Brigitte is heading a study comparing the effectiveness of the CCAS scale as a screening tool for cognitive impairment compared to current clinical scales in addition to running a phase 3 clinical trial for Multiple System Atrophy. When not working, Brigitte enjoys running, teaching Irish dance, and reading.
Brigitte’s publications can be found here.
Contact info: 617-726-4962 | bjacoby@mgh.harvard.edu
Miranda Mize
Contact info: mmize@mgh.harvard.edu
Louisa Selvadurai
Contact info:
Xavier Guell
Xavier Guell graduated with his MD degree from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona Spain. He first came as a student to the Schmahmann lab in 2013, visited again in 2014, and then came to Boston as a post-doctoral fellow, to work in the field of cerebellar neurobiology together with Dr. Schmahmann and Dr. John Gabrieli at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Xavier is a powerhouse of energy, enthusiasm, and creativity. His paper on dysmetria of thought manifesting as metalinguistic deficits was inspired; his work on the papers on social cognition and the CCAS/Schmahmann scale have been instrumental in bringing the projects to completion and published in high impact journals, and his innovative ideas about brain organization using task-based and resting state functional connectivity mapping to study the human brain in health and disease will be transformative.
We’re lucky to have Xavier in the lab and we hope this is just the early phase beginning of a long, productive, and thoroughly enjoyable career in the world of clinical neurology and basic and translation science of the cerebellum.
Dr. Guell’s publications can be found here.
Franziska Hoche, MD
Dr. Franziska Hoche (M.D.), a postdoctoral investigator and pediatric neurology resident joined the lab in 2012 having received cerebellar research scholarships from the German Neuropediatric Society and the Dr. Senckenberg’ Society Frankfurt.
Dr. Hoche received her M.D. at the Goethe – University in Frankfurt, Germany, where she finished her doctoral thesis on neurodegeneration of auditory brainstem nuclei and fibre tracts in Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 2, Type 3 and Type 7 (SCA2, SCA3, SCA7) at the lab of Professor Udo Rüb and Professor Horst Werner Korf at the Dr. Senckenberg’ Institute of Chronomedicine.
Her research focuses on the understanding of influences and contributors to motor and cognitive dysfunctions in cerebellar disorders of childhood and adulthood. She uses both tools of classic clinical neurology, developmental psychology, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience as well as neuroimaging techniques to search for interactions, concepts, maps and analogies of how cognition and behavior are affected in children and adults with cerebellar diseases.
Dr. Hoche has a special interest in the neurodegenerative and cognitive pattern of a hereditary cerebellar diseases of childhood and she is one of few international physician scientist experts in the neurocognitive profile of Ataxia-telangiectasia (AT).
Her research projects in the Schmahmann Lab include evaluation of cognitive and behavioral changes and the cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome (CCAS) in adult ataxic patients and pediatric patients with Ataxia-telangiectasia (AT), as well as the development of a pediatric ataxia rating scale.
Dr. Hoche’s publications can be found here.
Share this with someone!
