Sheraz Khan, Ph.D.

I am Instructor (Research Faculty) at Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School. I have over 8 years of research and clinical experience working with different neuro-imaging modalities, with an emphasis on MEG. For the past 9 years, I have studied the brain using magnetoencephalography (MEG) for clinical and experimental research. I have not only published several seminal findings on brain function in patients with Autism Spectral Disorder (ASD), my work has pushed forward the development of novel techniques for analyzing neurophysiological signals.

I have trained with world leading MEG scientists including Sylvian Baillet, Matti Hämäläinen and David Cohen. My unique contribution to research is implementation of expertise in MEG methods, instrumentation, analysis and applications. I have been developing software for basic and clinical MEG/EEG research and since 2006 have been part of development teams of widely used MEG/EEG processing packages (MNE/Brainstrom). The tools that I developed are routinely used in MEG/EEG research and have led to several high impact publications.

During my postdoc under the supervision of Dr. Tal Kenet, I have developed advanced signal processing methods for understanding neural underpinnings of ASD. Our recent papers; Khan et al, BRAIN, 2015 and Khan et al, PNAS, 2013 sheds new light on functional connectivity in ASD. The neurophysiological metrics presented in these papers, can be used to blindly identify individuals with ASD with high accuracy and correlate with severity of ASD. For these projects, I have been awarded Nancy Lurie Marks Fellowship by Harvard Medical School to investigate local functional connectivity in autism.

My other important research contribution is that I am routinely involved in training MEG users. My integrated MEG processing pipeline is now widely used in MGH. Since 2010, I am part of the teaching faculty for Annual Multi-modal Neuroimaging course organized by MGH/HST Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, in which participants from all over the world get trained in different neuroimaging modalities. I have been invited to participate as a jury member at annual Office for Research Career Development (ORCD), Research Fellows Poster Celebration in 2014 and 2015. Beside that I also contribute to CME courses organized by Harvard Catalyst. I also regularly mentor several scientist at undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral level in MEG acquisition, analysis and data interpretation.

Before joining MGH I completed my PhD (summa cum laude) in Applied Mathematics at Ecole Polytechnique, France under the supervision of Drs Sylvain Baillet and Habbib Ammari. My PhD research binds together two of the most important aspects of MEG research: spatial and temporal dynamics. I have also received Masters in Signal Processing from SUPELEC, France in 2006 and Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics from NED University, Pakistan in 2001 (summa cum laude). I believe my efforts are bridging the detrimental gap between the field of MEG methods development and the various neuroscience fields that use MEG. My research is not only helping us understand the neurophysiological mechanisms, but is also geared towards identification of an objective diagnostic biomarker for ASD.

Education

Doctor of Philosophy (Applied Mathematics), Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France. 2010

Master of Engineering (Control and Signal Processing), Ecole Superieure d'Electricite (SUPELEC), Paris, France. 2006

Bachelor of Engineering (Industral Electronics), NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan, 2001

Publications

Sheraz Khan, David Cohen, "Using the magnetoencephalogram to noninvasively measure magnetite in the living human brain", Human Brain Mapping, 2018 [full text].

Sheraz Khan*, Javeria Hashmi*, Fahimeh Mamashli, Konstantinos Michmizos, Manfred Kitzbichler, Hari Bharadwaj, Yousra Bekhti, Santosh Ganesan, Keri A Garel, Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, Randy Gollub, Jian Kong, Lucia M Vaina, Kunjan Rana, Steven Stufflebeam, Matti Hamalainen, and Tal Kenet "Maturation Trajectories of Cortical Resting-State Networks Depend on the Mediating Frequency Band", Neuroimage, 2018 (Equal Contribution) [full text].

Krishnaswamy, Pavitra, Gabriel Obregon-Henao, Jyrki Ahveninen, Sheraz Khan, Behtash Babadi, Juan Eugenio Iglesias, Matti S. Hämäläinen, and Patrick L. Purdon. "Sparsity enables estimation of both subcortical and cortical activity from MEG and EEG." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2017 [full text].

Javeria A. Hashmi, Marco L. Loggia, Sheraz Khan, Lei Gao, Jieun Kim, Vitaly Napadow, Emery N. Brown, Oluwaseun Akeju. “Dexmedetomidine disrupts the local and global efficiency of large-scale brain networks”, Anesthesia, 2017 [full text].

Charmaine Demanuele · Ullrich Bartsch · Bengi Baran, Sheraz Khan, Dara S Manoach and D. S. Manoach. "Coordination of Slow Waves with Sleep Spindles Predicts Sleep-Dependent Memory Consolidation in Schizophrenia." Sleep, 2017. [full text].

Fahimeh Mamashli, Sheraz khan, Hari Bharadwaj, Konstantinos Michmizos, Santosh Ganesan, Keri-Lee A. Garel, Javeria Ali Hashmi, Martha R. Herbert, Matti Hämäläinen, Tal Kene. “Auditory Processing in Noise is Associated with Complex Patterns of Disrupted Functional Connectivity in Autism Spectrum Disorder”. Autism Research, 2016 [full text].

Ganesan, Santosh, Sheraz Khan, Keri-Lee A. Garel, Matti S. Hämäläinen, and Tal Kenet. "Normal Evoked Response to Rapid Sequences of Tactile Pulses in Autism Spectrum Disorders." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 10 (2016). [full text].

Sheraz Khan, Javeria A. Hashmi, Fahimeh Mamashli, Hari M. Bharadwaj, Santosh Ganesan, Konstantinos Michmizos, Manfred Kitzbichler et al. "Altered Onset Response Dynamics in Somatosensory Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder." Frontiers in Neuroscience 10 (2016), [full text].

Sheraz Khan, Konstantinos Michmizos, Mark Tommerdahl, Santosh Ganesan, Manfred G. Kitzbichler, Manuel Zetino, Keri-Lee A. Garel, Martha R. Herbert, Matti S. Hämäläinen, Tal Kenet “Somatosensory cortex functional connectivity abnormalities in autism show opposite trends, depending on direction and spatial scale.” BRAIN (2015) [full text].

Manfred G. Kitzbichler, Sheraz Khan, Santosh Ganesan, Mark G. Vangel, Martha R. Herbert, Matti S. Hämäläinen, and Tal Kenet. "Altered development and multifaceted band-specific abnormalities of resting state networks in autism." Biological psychiatry (2014). [full text].

Javeria A. Hashmi, Jian Kong, Rosa Spaeth, Sheraz Khan, Ted J. Kaptchuk, and Randy L. Gollub. "Functional network architecture predicts psychologically mediated analgesia related to treatment in chronic knee pain patients." The Journal of Neuroscience 34, no. 11 (2014): 3924-3936. [full text].

Sheraz Khan, Julien Lefèvre, Sylvain Baillet, Konstantinos P. Michmizos, Santosh Ganesan, Manfred G. Kitzbichler, Manuel Zetino, Matti S. Hämäläinen, Christos Papadelis, and Tal Kenet. "Encoding cortical dynamics in sparse features." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 (2014). [full text].

Sheraz Khan, and David Cohen. "Note: Magnetic noise from the inner wall of a magnetically shielded room." Review of Scientific Instruments 84, no. 5 (2013): 056101. [full text].

Sheraz Khan, Alexandre Gramfort, Nandita R. Shetty, Manfred G. Kitzbichler, Santosh Ganesan, Joseph M. Moran, et al. "Local and long-range functional connectivity is reduced in concert in autism spectrum disorders." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 110, no. 8 (2013): 3107-3112. [full text].

Jeremy D. Slater, Sheraz Khan, Zhimin Li, and Eduardo Castillo. "Characterization of interictal epileptiform discharges with time-resolved cortical current maps using the Helmholtz–Hodge decomposition." Frontiers in Neurology 3 (2012). [full text].

Sheraz Khan, Julien Lefevre, Habib Ammari, and Sylvain Baillet. "Feature detection and tracking in optical flow on non-flat manifolds." Pattern Recognition Letters 32, no. 15 (2011): 2047-2052. [full text].

Julien Lefevre, Francois Leroy, Sheraz Khan, Jessica Dubois, Petra S Huppi, Sylvain Baillet and Jean-Francois Mangin, Identification of growth seeds in the neonate brain through surfacic Helmholtz decomposition", Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2009 [full text].

Sheraz Khan, Benoit Cottereau, Richard M. Leahy, John C. Mosher, Habib Ammari, Sylvain Baillet, A Two-Step Imaging Procedure for MEG Characterization of Cortical Currents: Location and Spatial Extent", Biomedical Imaging; From Nano to Macro, 2008 [full text].

Funding

2010 -2011; Application of Helmholtz Hodge Decomposition in Brain Imaging; Transition award for young PhDs, Ecole Polytechnique, France Principal Investigator, €20,000

2013-2015; Local Functional Connectivity in Autism Spectrum Disorders; Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation, Harvard Medical School, Principal Investigator, $160,000