Areas of Expertise

Medical Family Therapy

I'm currently enrolled in a master's program in Marriage and Family Therapy through National University. My specialization in the NU MFT program is Medical Family Therapy, which applies the systemic and relational orientation of MFT to integrated and collaborative care, often in the primary care setting. I'm specifically interested in applying the expertise I've gained as a research neuroscientist (see below) to chronic and terminal conditions, bereavement, familial caregiving, and complex biopsychosocial presentations.

Clinical Neuroscience

I've been fortunate to have worked with internationally-recognized scientists and clinicians through a wide variety of research projects in cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, psychiatry (including autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's, and neurotrauma and recovery.

As most, if not all, of this experience translates directly to patient care, I have provided details of my prior work in the sections below. This list of projects and publications is not exhaustive: it's limited to a selection of peer-reviewed journal articles, since these are the standard measure of "success" in academia, so much of my career -- teaching, invited review articles, and conference presentations, among others, aren't represented. It does, however, represent a cross-section of my research work.

An atlas of brain regions for MRI research

Vestibular injury and recovery after concussion

Some patients who've experienced concussion recover well from their acute injury, with no lasting ill effects. Others, however, experience persistent dizziness, headaches, and other symptoms after the initial injury has resolved, and for a subset of these patients, the symptoms can become a chronic issue. My colleagues and I have been attempting to find out exactly why this is, whether we can predict which patients will experience long-lasting symptoms, and what interventions are most useful in treating them. Although I've contributed to much of this research, I've taken a special interest in explaining, from a biopathological perspective, why so many patients with vestibular dysfunction have affective symptoms, too. It seems that affective traits and states such as depression and anxiety don't merely arise from the trauma of injury, but can actually be modulated by, and modulate, vestibular sensation -- including at the lowest level (attention and arousal).

Smith, J.L., Diekfuss, J.A., Dudley, J.A., et al. Visuo-vestibular and cognitive connections of the vestibular neuromatrix are conserved across and age and injury populations. J Neuroimaging (2023).
Smith, J.L., & Allen, J.W. EAGLE449: An atlas compilation for imaging research on central vestibular mechanisms. Nature Portfolio (2023)
Smith, J.L., Ahluwalia, V., Gore, R.K. et al. Eagle-449: A volumetric, whole-brain compilation of brain atlases for vestibular functional MRI research. Sci Data 10, 29 (2023).
Smith, J.L., Trofimova, A., Ahluwalia, V., Casado Garrido, J.J., Hurtado, J., Frank, R., Hodge, A., Gore, R.K. and Allen, J.W.. The “vestibular neuromatrix”: A proposed, expanded vestibular network from graph theory in post‐concussive vestibular dysfunction. Hum Brain Mapp, 43(5), pp.1501-1518. (2022)
Allen, J.W., Trofimova, A., Ahluwalia, V., Smith, J.L., Abidi, S.A., Peters, M.A.K., Rajananda, S., Hurtado, J.E. and Gore, R.K.. Altered processing of complex visual stimuli in patients with postconcussive visual motion sensitivity. Am J Neuroradiol, 42(5), pp.930-937. (2021)
Trofimova, A., Smith, J.L., Ahluwalia, V., Hurtado, J., Gore, R.K. and Allen, J.W.. Alterations in resting‐state functional brain connectivity and correlations with vestibular/ocular‐motor screening measures in postconcussion vestibular dysfunction. J Neuroimaging, 31(2), pp.277-286. (2021)

For personal reasons, I'm incredibly interested in the etiology and treatment of illnesses associated with aging -- especially Alzheimer's disease, mixed dementia, and stroke. I've also been able to contribute to research in developmental psychology, which I'm including in this section as part of a theme of neural functioning across the lifespan.

Wu J, Shahid SS, Lin Q, Hone-Blanchet A, Smith JL, Risk BB, Bisht AS, Loring DW, Goldstein FC, Levey AI, Lah JJ, & Qiu D. Multimodal magnetic resonance imaging reveals distinct sensitivity of hippocampal subfields in asymptomatic stage of Alzheimer's disease. Front Aging Neurosci. (2022)
Engel MG, Smith JL, Mao K, Farias Quipildor G, Cui MH, Gulinello M, Branch CA, Gandy SE & DM Huffman. Evidence for preserved insulin responsiveness in the aging rat brain. Geroscience. (2022)
Ezzati, A., Zimmerman, M.E., Katz, M.J., Sundermann, E.E., Smith, J.L., Lipton, M.L. and Lipton, R.B. Hippocampal subfields differentially correlate with chronic pain in older adults. Brain Res, 1573, pp.54-62. (2014)
Bae, O.N., Rajanikant, K., Min, J., Smith, J., Baek, S.H., Serfozo, K., Hejabian, S., Lee, K.Y., Kassab, M. and Majid, A.. Lymphocyte cell kinase activation mediates neuroprotection during ischemic preconditioning. J Neurosci, 32(21), pp.7278-7286. (2012)
Smith, J.L. Neurodynamics of Episodic Memory Consolidation [Doctoral dissertation]. Michigan State University. Department of Neuroscience. (2008)
Passarotti, A.M., Smith, J., DeLano, M. and Huang, J. Developmental differences in the neural bases of the face inversion effect show progressive tuning of face-selective regions to the upright orientation. Neuroimage, 34(4), pp.1708-1722. (2007)
Zemke, D., Smith, J.L., Reeves, M.J. and Majid, A. Ischemia and ischemic tolerance in the brain: an overview. Neurotoxicology, 25(6), pp.895-904. (2004)

MRI images from a study of Alzheimer's disease in rats

Memory, memory disorders, neurodevelopment, aging, and stroke

A bar chart of brain signal responses after mindfulness mediation training

Compassion, empathy, and provider burnout

Some of my most interesting collaborations have concerned the neurobiological basis of provider empathy and burnout. My colleagues and I have investigated -- and continue to investigate -- the changes in brain systems with mindfulness meditation and empathy training in students and clinicians.

Smith, J.L., Allen, J.W., Haack, C., Wehrmeyer, K., Alden, K., Lund, M.B. and Mascaro, J.S.. The impact of app-delivered mindfulness meditation on functional connectivity and self-reported mindfulness among health profession trainees. Mindfulness, 12(1), pp.92-106. (2021)
Smith, J.L., Allen, J.W., Haack, C.I., Wehrmeyer, K.L., Alden, K.G., Lund, M.B. and Mascaro, J.S. Impact of App-Delivered Mindfulness Meditation on Functional Connectivity, Mental Health, and Sleep Disturbances Among Physician Assistant Students: Randomized, Wait-list Controlled Pilot Study. JMIR Form Res, 5(10), p.e24208. (2021)

Patients who suffer from chronic pain or lingering symptoms of mild traumatic brain injury often need to relearn to navigate the world and renegotiate their experience of it. There's a vast continuum of symptom severities in both these conditions -- from subjectively significant pain or cognitive impairments to severe and disabling affective, cognitive, and quality of life issues. I'm proud to have contributed to our progress in researching and understanding the pathophysiology of these symptoms, and particularly pleased with one of our most recent publications in Frontiers in Pain Research which aimed to rigorously define regions and connections of interest in pain perception and processing in addition to cognitive and affective substrates.