Shahriar SheikhBahaei, Ph.D.
Dr. SheikhBahaei’s interest in neuroscience stemmed from the usual combination of an aptitude for science and a medical problem (stuttering) that brought him into bioscience at a young age. Dr. SheikhBahaei received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley, where he worked with Dr. Bob Zucker on the regulation of neurotransmitter release and Dr. John Rubenstein (UC San Francisco) on development of GABAergic neurons in basal ganglia. Dr. SheikhBahaei completed his doctoral studies in Neuroscience (2017) jointly under NIMH/NINDS – University College London (UCL) Graduate Partnership Program where he worked with Drs. Jeffrey Smith (NINDS) and Alexander Gourine (UCL). His graduate studies were on how astrocytic networks control activities of respiratory motor circuits within the brainstem. After short postdoctoral research at NINDS, Dr. SheikhBahaei became an Independent Research Scholar in 2019. In collaboration with the lab
Fraud allegations fly in dispute over brain-scanning tech made famous on Netflix’s ‘Making a Murderer’
January 8, 2021 at 9:10 am
Neuroscientist Larry Farwell doesn’t read minds, but he can usually catch a liar.
For decades, Farwell refined and promoted a system that measures brainwaves to see if someone recalls a specific piece of information. Using sensors set in a headband and visual prompts flashed on a screen, the Seattle-area scientist contends he can show whether, say, a murder suspect has been at a crime scene.
Farwell imagines a day when brain fingerprinting is standard practice in criminal investigations and counter-terror operations. It’s a dream Farwell effuses about even as he’s locked in a legal nightmare.