Shahin Nasr
Shahin Nasr (born 1977 in Tehran) is an Iranian-American neuroscientist specializing in visual neuroscience and high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). He earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in biomedical engineering in 1999 and 2002, respectively. Nasr received his Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience in 2009 from the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), School of Cognitive Sciences, under the supervision of Prof. Hossein Esteky. Following his doctoral studies, he joined Prof. Roger Tootell’s lab at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, as a postdoctoral fellow. Since 2018, he has been a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, where he currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Radiology.
Research and Contributions
Nasr's research is dedicated to unraveling the functional organization of the human visual cortex. In 2011, he and his colleagues published a groundbreaking study demonstrating the homology of scene-selective areas between humans and non-human primates [1]. They later uncovered the sensitivity of human scene-selective areas to lower-level visual features such as orientation [2] and rectilinearity [3], as well as their involvement in cognitive tasks [4][5]. His studies also demonstrated the effects of disrupting corticostriatal loops on the function of these regions [6]. In 2024, his team identified a previously unrecognized scene-selective area in the posterior intraparietal gyrus, which they named PIGS (Posterior Intraparietal Gyrus Scene-Selective Area) [7].
Nasr has also been a pioneer in applying high-resolution fMRI to study the mesoscale functional organization of the extrastriate cortex. His work provided the first in vivo evidence of thin and thick stripes in the human visual area V2 and existence of fine-scale processing channels within early visual areas [8][9][10]. Additionally, he has contributed to understanding the differential effects of anisometropic versus strabismic amblyopia on mesoscale neuronal structures such as ocular dominance columns [11].
Awards and Recognition
In 2024, Nasr received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President Joseph Biden [12].
References
- ↑ Nasr, Shahin; Liu, Ning; Devaney, Kathryn J.; Yue, Xiaomin; Rajimehr, Reza; Ungerleider, Leslie G.; Tootell, Roger B. H. (2011-09-28). "Scene-Selective Cortical Regions in Human and Nonhuman Primates". The Journal of Neuroscience. 31 (39): 13771–13785. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2792-11.2011. ISSN 0270-6474. PMC 3489186. PMID 21957240.
- ↑ Nasr, Shahin; Tootell, Roger B. H. (2012-10-24). "A Cardinal Orientation Bias in Scene-Selective Visual Cortex". The Journal of Neuroscience. 32 (43): 14921–14926. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2036-12.2012. ISSN 0270-6474. PMC 3495613. PMID 23100415.
- ↑ Nasr, Shahin; Echavarria, Cesar E.; Tootell, Roger B.H. (2014-05-14). "Thinking Outside the Box: Rectilinear Shapes Selectively Activate Scene-Selective Cortex". The Journal of Neuroscience. 34 (20): 6721–6735. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4802-13.2014. ISSN 0270-6474. PMC 4019792. PMID 24828628.
- ↑ Nasr, Shahin; Devaney, Kathryn J.; Tootell, Roger B.H. (December 2013). "Spatial encoding and underlying circuitry in scene-selective cortex". NeuroImage. 83: 892–900. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.07.030. PMC 3815999. PMID 23872156.
- ↑ Nasr, Shahin; Tootell, Roger B.H. (November 2012). "Role of fusiform and anterior temporal cortical areas in facial recognition". NeuroImage. 63 (3): 1743–1753. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.08.031. PMC 3472036. PMID 23034518.
- ↑ Nasr, Shahin; Rosas, Herminia D. (2016-10-05). "Impact of Visual Corticostriatal Loop Disruption on Neural Processing within the Parahippocampal Place Area". The Journal of Neuroscience. 36 (40): 10456–10471. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0741-16.2016. ISSN 0270-6474. PMC 5050334. PMID 27707978.
- ↑ Kennedy, Bryan; Malladi, Sarala N; Tootell, Roger BH; Nasr, Shahin (2024-03-20). "A previously undescribed scene-selective site is the key to encoding ego-motion in naturalistic environments". eLife. 13. doi:10.7554/eLife.91601.3. ISSN 2050-084X. PMC 10954307 Check
|pmc=value (help). PMID 38506719 Check|pmid=value (help). Unknown parameter|article-number=ignored (help) - ↑ Tootell, Roger B.H.; Nasr, Shahin (2017-08-16). "Columnar Segregation of Magnocellular and Parvocellular Streams in Human Extrastriate Cortex". The Journal of Neuroscience. 37 (33): 8014–8032. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0690-17.2017. ISSN 0270-6474. PMC 5559769. PMID 28724749.
- ↑ Nasr, Shahin; Tootell, Roger B.H. (November 2018). "Columnar organization of mid-spectral and end-spectral hue preferences in human visual cortex". NeuroImage. 181: 748–759. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.07.053. PMC 6263155. PMID 30053514.
- ↑ Kennedy, B.; Bex, P.; Hunter, D.G.; Nasr, S. (January 2023). "Two fine-scale channels for encoding motion and stereopsis within the human magnocellular stream". Progress in Neurobiology. 220. doi:10.1016/j.pneurobio.2022.102374. PMC 9832588 Check
|pmc=value (help). PMID 36403864 Check|pmid=value (help). Unknown parameter|article-number=ignored (help) - ↑ Nasr, Shahin; Skerswetat, Jan; Gaier, Eric D.; Malladi, Sarala N.; Kennedy, Bryan; Tootell, Roger B. H.; Bex, Peter; Hunter, David G. (2025-02-05). "Differential Impacts of Strabismic and Anisometropic Amblyopia on the Mesoscale Functional Organization of the Human Visual Cortex". The Journal of Neuroscience. 45 (6): e0745242024. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0745-24.2024. ISSN 0270-6474. PMC 11800752 Check
|pmc=value (help). PMID 39824636 Check|pmid=value (help). - ↑ "President Biden Honors Nearly 400 Federally Funded Early-Career Scientists | OSTP". The White House. 2025-01-14. Retrieved 2025-02-17.
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