Xiong Jiang, PhD

Associate Professor

Dr. Jiang’s lab, The Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory, uses varying neuroimaging techniques to study cognitive function and cognitive impairments. The current research in his lab has been focusing on developing MRI techniques that are sensitive and accurate to detect and assess neural injury at early stages of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders, with an ultimate goal of developing non-invasive biomarkers that can be used in clinical practice and drug development.

Georgetown Alzheimer’s Researcher has “BrightFocus”

Xiong Jiang, PhD, believes there is a way to identify patients at an early enough stage in Alzheimer’s disease — well before clinical symptoms crop up  — that they could be effectively treated with novel agents.

His ideas have earned him a 3-year $300,000 grant from the BrightFocus Foundation, and on June 9th he shared the details of the study he will undertake to test the method during a special reception: An Evening of BrightFocus.

Brain Scan Reveals Cognitive Deficits in Older “Cognitively Normal” HIV+ Individuals

Neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have found in a small study that although a group of HIV+ older individuals scored  “cognitively normal” in standard neuropsychology testing, a scan of their brains tells a different story.

Published Nov. 17 in the journal AIDS Care, functional MRI (fMRI) scans, taken while participants were performing an alternating face-gender/word-semantic task, revealed that HIV+ individuals in the study showed deficits in cognitive functioning, compared to an age matched healthy controls.