Aron Barbey

About

Aron Keith Barbey is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he also holds a position in the Department of Bioengineering. He began his academic career at Illinois in 2011 and was promoted to Full Professor in 2019. During his tenure at Illinois, he held several leadership roles, including Director of the Center for Brain Plasticity, Director of the Intelligence, Learning, and Plasticity Initiative, and Chair of the Intelligent Systems Research Theme at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. He later served as the Mildred Francis Thompson Professor and Director of the Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Barbey's research investigates how intelligence emerges from the network organization and dynamics of the human connectome, utilizing methods from network neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and computer science. His work aims to deepen the understanding of the neural foundations of intelligence and to foster innovations in cognitive enhancement, neurorehabilitation, and biologically inspired artificial intelligence. His research group has secured over $26 million in funding from various organizations, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense, the White House BRAIN Initiative, NIH, NSF, and private industry sponsors. Dr. Barbey has received numerous honors, including the Mensa Foundation Prize for his work on the…

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Neuroscience
• Cognitive science
• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Biology
• Cognitive psychology
• Medicine
• Radiology
• Physics

Selected publications

• Antioxidant Therapies in Traumatic Brain Injury

  Antioxidants · 2020 · 97 citations

  Due to a multiplicity of causes provoking traumatic brain injury (TBI), TBI is a highly heterogeneous pathology, characterized by high mortality and disability rates. TBI is an acute neurodegenerative event, potentially and unpredictably evolving into sub-chronic and chronic neurodegenerative events, with transient or permanent neurologic, cognitive, and motor deficits, for which no valid standardized therapies are available. A vast body of literature demonstrates that TBI-induced oxidative/nitr…

  DOI

• Standard‐space atlas of the viscoelastic properties of the human brain

  Human Brain Mapping · 2020 · 88 citations

  Standard anatomical atlases are common in neuroimaging because they facilitate data analyses and comparisons across subjects and studies. The purpose of this study was to develop a standardized human brain atlas based on the physical mechanical properties (i.e., tissue viscoelasticity) of brain tissue using magnetic resonance elastography (MRE). MRE is a phase contrast-based MRI method that quantifies tissue viscoelasticity noninvasively and in vivo thus providing a macroscopic representation of…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Investigating cognitive neuroscience theories of human intelligence: A connectome‐based predictive modeling approach

  Human Brain Mapping · 2022 · 36 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Central to modern neuroscientific theories of human intelligence is the notion that general intelligence depends on a primary brain region or network, engaging spatially localized (rather than global) neural representations. Recent findings in network neuroscience, however, challenge this assumption, providing evidence that general intelligence may depend on system-wide network mechanisms, suggesting that local representations are necessary but not sufficient to account for the neural architectu…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cognitive Neuroscience Meets the Community of Knowledge

  Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience · 2021 · 26 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Cognitive neuroscience seeks to discover the biological foundations of the human mind. One goal is to explain how mental operations are generated by the information processing architecture of the human brain. Our aim is to assess whether this is a well-defined objective. Our contention will be that it is not because the information processing of any given individual is not contained entirely within that individual's brain. Rather, it typically includes components situated in the heads of others,…

  DOI

• The Effects of Sustained Literacy Engagement on Cognition and Sentence Processing Among Older Adults

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2022-07-11 · 14 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Considerable evidence suggests that language processing depends on memory processes, which are vulnerable to declines with aging. Yet little is known about the effects of language processing in the form of sustained literacy engagement on memory and other aspects of cognition. In the current study, adults (60–79 years of age) were randomly assigned to an 8-week program of leisure reading ( n = 38) or to an active puzzle control ( n = 38). Relative to the control, the experimental group showed di…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jordan Grafman

  108 shared

• Frank Krueger

  George Mason University

  63 shared

• Roberto Colom

  42 shared

• Christopher E. Zwilling

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  34 shared

• Arthur F. Kramer

  29 shared

• Neal J. Cohen

  Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

  26 shared

• Marta K. Zamroziewicz

  26 shared

• Erick J. Paul

  Microsoft (United States)

  23 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Bioengineering

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  2004

• M.S., Bioengineering

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  2001

• B.S., Bioengineering

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  1998

Awards & honors

• Mensa Foundation Prize

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Shuming Nieh-128
• Yi Luh-117
• Stephen Bopparth-98