Top Researchers
Top Neuroscience Researchers at Tufts University for 2026
Tufts University’s recent neuroscience output spans questions about cognition, stress, circuitry, and brain models, reflecting a field that reaches from cellular mechanisms to behavior and theory. The snapshot below highlights researchers whose work over the past year shows how broad neuroscience can be within one institution.
Across the sampled works, you’ll see recurring attention to cognitive neuroscience alongside cellular and molecular neuroscience, with adjacent threads in behavioral science, psychology, and molecular biology. Together, these studies suggest an active research community linking brain function, mental health, and experimental models in complementary ways.
Featured Researchers
Jamie Maguire
Jamie Maguire’s recent Tufts University work centers on cellular and molecular neuroscience, behavioral neuroscience, and social psychology, with publications on neurosteroid therapeutics, chronic epilepsy, and stress- and alcohol-related emotional processing.
Activity over the last year: 11 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- New directions in neurosteroid therapeutics in neuropsychiatry (Mar 2025)
- Disease modification upon 2 weeks of tofacitinib treatment in a mouse model of chronic epilepsy (Mar 2025)
- Stress and alcohol impact network states involved in emotional processing: relevance of comorbid AUD and psychiatric illnesses (Oct 2025)
Tad T. Brunyé
Tad T. Brunyé’s Tufts University research connects cognitive neuroscience with developmental and educational psychology, alongside applied work on stress induction methods, vestibular stimulation, and electrical stimulation for performance enhancement.
Activity over the last year: 7 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- Identifying the most effective acute stress induction methods for producing SAM- and HPA-related physiological responses: a meta-analysis (Jan 2025)
- A review of parameter settings for galvanic vestibular stimulation in clinical applications (Feb 2025)
- Transcutaneous and transcranial electrical stimulation for enhancing military performance: an update and systematic review (Mar 2025)
Michael M. Halassa
Michael M. Halassa’s Tufts University publications emphasize cognitive neuroscience and cellular and molecular neuroscience, including studies of thalamic control of task uncertainty, associative thalamic function, and computational models for psychiatry.
Activity over the last year: 7 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
David L. Kaplan
David L. Kaplan’s Tufts University research spans biomaterials, biomedical engineering, and molecular biology, with recent papers on brain tissue models, oxidative stress imaging, serotonergic stimulation, and injury-related Alzheimer’s-like phenotypes.
Activity over the last year: 5 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- Repetitive injury induces phenotypes associated with Alzheimer’s disease by reactivating HSV-1 in a human brain tissue model (Jan 2025)
- Multi-modal label-free imaging of cellular metabolism and oxidative stress in 3D brain tissue models (Dec 2025)
- Sustained Serotonergic Stimulation Platform for Peripheral Axonal Regeneration (Aug 2025)
Chris Fields
Chris Fields’s Tufts University work bridges cognitive neuroscience with physics, focusing on theoretical questions of consciousness, imaginative experience, and the temporal structure of selfhood.
Activity over the last year: 4 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- Thoughts and thinkers: On the complementarity between objects and processes (Jan 2025)
- How do inner screens enable imaginative experience? Applying the free-energy principle directly to the study of conscious experience (Jan 2025)
- Temporal depth in a coherent self and in depersonalization: theoretical model (Sep 2025)
Pantelis Antonoudiou
Pantelis Antonoudiou’s Tufts University research combines cellular and molecular neuroscience with behavioral neuroscience and social psychology, featuring studies on stress, alcohol, early-life stress, and NMDA receptor modulation.
Activity over the last year: 6 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- Stress and alcohol impact network states involved in emotional processing: relevance of comorbid AUD and psychiatric illnesses (Oct 2025)
- Early Life Stress Impairs VTA Coordination of BLA Network and Behavioral States (Feb 2025)
- Thienopyrimidinone Derivatives as a GluN2B/C/D Biased, Positive Allosteric Modulator of the N-Methyl-d-Aspartate Receptor (Apr 2025)
Léo Pio‐Lopez
Léo Pio‐Lopez’s Tufts University publications link molecular biology and cognitive neuroscience with plant science, addressing aging, regeneration, causal network embeddings, and cellular dissociation.
Activity over the last year: 4 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- Aging as a Loss of Goal‐Directedness: An Evolutionary Simulation and Analysis Unifying Regeneration with Anatomical Rejuvenation (Oct 2025)
- Universal multilayer network embedding reveals a causal link between GABA neurotransmitter and cancer (Jun 2025)
- Atavistic Genetic Expression Dissociation ( AGED ) During Aging: Meta‐Phylostratigraphic Evidence of Cellular and Tissue‐Level Phylogenetic Dissociation (Dec 2025)
Adam Safron
Adam Safron’s Tufts University work is rooted in cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology, with recent publications on neuroimaging effect sizes, psychedelic consciousness, and imaginative experience.
Activity over the last year: 3 indexed journal articles.
Top publications:
- Beyond Increasing Sample Sizes: Optimizing Effect Sizes in Neuroimaging Research on Individual Differences (Jan 2025)
- On the varieties of conscious experiences: Altered Beliefs Under Psychedelics (ALBUS) (Jan 2025)
- How do inner screens enable imaginative experience? Applying the free-energy principle directly to the study of conscious experience (Jan 2025)
What Tufts University's Neuroscience Community Is Working On
The most common subfields across this Tufts University snapshot are cognitive neuroscience and cellular and molecular neuroscience, showing a community that is actively studying both brain systems and the mechanisms that support them. Behavioral neuroscience, social psychology, and molecular biology also appear repeatedly, pointing to a research environment that connects neural circuitry with stress, emotion, cognition, and biological models. Together, these patterns suggest an institution-wide interest in how brain function scales from molecules to behavior and experience.- Cognitive Neuroscience - seen across 5 of the featured researchers
- Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience - seen across 3 of the featured researchers
- Behavioral Neuroscience - seen across 2 of the featured researchers
- Social Psychology - seen across 2 of the featured researchers
- Molecular Biology - seen across 2 of the featured researchers
These recent projects give a useful view of how neuroscience at Tufts University is evolving across levels of analysis, from molecules and tissues to decision-making, stress, and consciousness. Explore the full set below to follow the themes that matter most to your own work, and consider using Resub to keep citation discovery, manuscript formatting, and submission preparation moving smoothly.
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