Reza Abbasi Asl • UCSF Profiles

Reza Abbasi Asl, PhD

Title(s)	Assistant Professor, Neurology
School	School of Medicine
Address	1651 Fourth Street, #612B San Francisco CA 94158
Phone	415-476-3199
ORCID	0000-0001-7824-4628
vCard	Download vCard

Other Positions


Title(s)	UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences

Biography

Education and Training

UC Berkeley	PhD	05/2018	Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
UC Berkeley	MSc	05/2018	Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Sharif University of Technology	MSc	01/2013	Biomedical Engineering
Amirkabir University of Technology	BSc	09/2010	Electrical Engineering

Awards and Honors

UCSF Innovation Ventures	2023	Catalyst Award
Sandler Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research (PBBR)	2021	New Frontiers Research Award
Weill Neurohub	2021	Next Great Ideas Award
UC Berkeley, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences	2018	Eli Jury Award
UC Berkeley Graduate Division	2017	May J. Koshland Fund in Memory of H.A. Jastro Award
Sharif University of Technology	2010	Excellence Award in Biomedical Engineering
Amirkabir University of Technology	2007	Excellence Award in Electrical Engineering

Overview

We are a research team at the University of California, San Francisco where we investigate the role of advanced computational tools in understanding brain functions and its related disorders. More specifically, our research program revolves around the development of interpretable machine learning tools to (1) integrate multi-modal data collected from the brain (and body) in both microscopic and macroscopic resolutions, (2) predict functions of biological systems in different resolutions, and (3) determine the functional differences across neurological disorders. We are a part of the Neuroscape Center and Cognitive Neuroscience division at UCSF and our team is supported through funding from NIH National Institute of Mental Health, NIH National Institute of Aging, Weill Neurohub, Sandler Program for Breakthrough in Biomedical Research, UCSF Innovation Ventures, and Google.

Websites

Abbasi Lab

Research

Research Activities and Funding

Determining the circuits and signals of sleep dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease through chronic intracranial recordings and closed-loop Deep Brain Stimulation
NIH R01NS131405Jul 1, 2023 - Jun 30, 2028
Role: co-Investigator

Interpretable Machine Learning for Video-Assisted Diagnosis and Tracking of Parkinson’s Disease
UCSF Innovation Ventures Catalyst AwardFeb 1, 2023 - Feb 1, 2025
Role: PI

Integrated functional and structural analysis of an entire column in mouse primary visual cortex
NIH/NIMH RF1MH128672Aug 1, 2022 - Jul 31, 2025
Role: PI

Revealing regionalization in whole-organ spatial datasets via interpretable machine learning
Sandler Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research Jan 1, 2022 - Jan 1, 2023
Role: PI

Synthetic and Augmented MRI for a shared neuroimaging infrastructure across the Weill Neurohub
Weill Neurohub Pillars Program AwardOct 1, 2021 - Sep 30, 2024
Role: PI

Revealing neural functions in primary visual cortex via interpretable and biologically realistic neural networks
Sandler Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research Jun 15, 2021 - Jun 14, 2022
Role: PI

Neural markers of impending task performance
NIH R03AG065966May 1, 2021 - Apr 30, 2023
Role: Co-Investigator

Revealing Principal Patterns, Brain Areas and Local Gene Regulatory Networks in the Adult Mouse Brain by Interpretable Machine Learning
Weill Neurohub - Next Great Ideas Program 7030453Apr 1, 2021 - Apr 1, 2023
Role: PI

Featured Content

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Bibliographic

Publications

Publications listed below are automatically derived from MEDLINE/PubMed and other sources, which might result in incorrect or missing publications. Researchers can login to make corrections and additions, or contact us for help. to make corrections and additions.

Altmetrics Details

PMC Citations indicate the number of times the publication was cited by articles in PubMed Central, and the Altmetric score represents citations in news articles and social media. (Note that publications are often cited in additional ways that are not shown here.) Fields are based on how the National Library of Medicine (NLM) classifies the publication's journal and might not represent the specific topic of the publication. Translation tags are based on the publication type and the MeSH terms NLM assigns to the publication. Some publications (especially newer ones and publications not in PubMed) might not yet be assigned Field or Translation tags.) Click a Field or Translation tag to filter the publications.

Motor network gamma oscillations in chronic home recordings predict dyskinesia in Parkinson's disease. Brain. 2024 Jan 09. Olaru M, Cernera S, Hahn A, Wozny TA, Anso J, de Hemptinne C, Little S, Neumann WJ, Abbasi-Asl R, Starr PA. PMID: 38195196.

View in: PubMed Mentions: Fields:
Bra Brain Neu Neurology
Interpretable prototype discovery in deep learning based time series classification. Integrated Systems: Innovations and Applications, Springer book chapter. 2023. Gaurav Ghosal, R. Abbasi-Asl.
Neurology. Diurnal Step Count Patterns in Progressive Multiple Sclerosis. 2023. D. Navani, V. Block, B. Cree, R. Abbasi-Asl. View Publication.
Journal of Vision. Reconstructing visual experience from a large-scale biologically realistic model of mouse primary visual cortex. 2023. R. Abbasi-Asl, Y. Chi, H. Yang, K. Dai, A. Arkhipov. View Publication.
Interpretable Video-Based Tracking and Quantification of Parkinsonism Clinical Motor States. medRxiv preprint. 2023. D. Deng, J. L. Ostrem, V. Nguyen, D. D. Cummins, J. Sun, A. Pathak, S. Little*, R. Abbasi-Asl*. View Publication.
The entropic heart: Tracking the psychedelic state via heart rate dynamics. bioRxiv preprint. 2023. F. E. Rosas, P. A. M. Mediano, C. Timmermann, A. I Luppi, D. Candia-Rivera, R. Abbasi-Asl, A. Gazzaley, M. L. Kringelbach, S. D. Muthukumaraswamy, D. Bor, S. Garfinkel, R. Carhart-Harris. View Publication.
Unsupervised pattern discovery in spatial gene expression atlas reveals mouse brain regions beyond established ontology. bioRxiv preprint. 2023. R. Cahill*, Y. Wang*, Patrick Xian, A. Lee, H. Zeng, B. Yu, B. Tasic, R. Abbasi-Asl. View Publication.
Machine Learning for Uncovering Biological Insights in Spatial Transcriptomics Data. ArXiv. 2023 Mar 29. Lee AJ, Cahill R, Abbasi-Asl R. PMID: 37033464; PMCID: PMC10081350.

View in: PubMed Mentions:
Editorial: Functional microcircuits in the brain and in artificial intelligent systems. Front Comput Neurosci. 2023; 17:1135507. Lee JH, Choe Y, Ardid S, Abbasi-Asl R, McCarthy M, Hu B. PMID: 36761841; PMCID: PMC9904200.

View in: PubMed Mentions:
Compression-enabled interpretability of voxel-wise encoding models. bioRxiv preprint. 2022. F Kamali, AA Suratgar, M Menhaj, R Abbasi-Asl. View Publication.
Robust Registration of Medical Images in the Presence of Spatially-Varying Noise. Algorithms. 2022; 15(2):58. Reza Abbasi-Asl, Aboozar Ghaffari, Emad Fatemizadeh. View Publication.
Journal of Vision. A large-scale standardized survey of neural receptive fields in an entire column in mouse V1. 2021. R. Abbasi-Asl, A. Muslim, J. Larkin, K. Takasaki, D. Millman, D. Denman, J. Lecoq, A, Arkhipov, N. W Gouwens, J. Waters, R C. Reid, S. EJ de Vries. View Publication.
Multi-Modal Prototype Learning for Interpretable Multivariable Time Series Classification. arxiv. 2021. Gaurav R Ghosal, Reza Abbasi-Asl. View Publication.
Structural Compression of Convolutional Neural Networks with Applications in Interpretability. Front Big Data. 2021; 4:704182. Abbasi-Asl R, Yu B. PMID: 34514381; PMCID: PMC8427695.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 1
Systematic Integration of Structural and Functional Data into Multi-scale Models of Mouse Primary Visual Cortex. Neuron. 2020 05 06; 106(3):388-403.e18. Billeh YN, Cai B, Gratiy SL, Dai K, Iyer R, Gouwens NW, Abbasi-Asl R, Jia X, Siegle JH, Olsen SR, Koch C, Mihalas S, Arkhipov A. PMID: 32142648.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 82 Fields:
Neu Neurology
Translation:Animals Cells
Superficial Bound of the Depth Limit of Two-Photon Imaging in Mouse Brain. eNeuro. 2020 Jan/Feb; 7(1). Takasaki K, Abbasi-Asl R, Waters J. PMID: 31907211; PMCID: PMC6984806.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 36 Fields:
Bra Brain Neu Neurology
Translation:Animals
Definitions, methods, and applications in interpretable machine learning. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 10 29; 116(44):22071-22080. Murdoch WJ, Singh C, Kumbier K, Abbasi-Asl R, Yu B. PMID: 31619572; PMCID: PMC6825274.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 174 Fields:
Sci Science
3-Photon Calcium Imaging of Deep Cortical Layers for Functional Connectomics. Optics and the Brain. 2019. Kevin Takasaki, Josh Larkin, Reza Abbasi-Asl, Dan Denman, Dan Millman, Saskia de Vries, Marc Takeno, Nuno M da Costa, R Clay Reid, Jack Waters. View Publication.
Brain-Computer Interface in Virtual Reality. 9th International IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering (NER). 2019. R. Abbasi-Asl, M. Keshavarzi, D. Y. Chan. View Publication.
Visual physiology of the layer 4 cortical circuit in silico. PLoS Comput Biol. 2018 11; 14(11):e1006535. Arkhipov A, Gouwens NW, Billeh YN, Gratiy S, Iyer R, Wei Z, Xu Z, Abbasi-Asl R, Berg J, Buice M, Cain N, da Costa N, de Vries S, Denman D, Durand S, Feng D, Jarsky T, Lecoq J, Lee B, Li L, Mihalas S, Ocker GK, Olsen SR, Reid RC, Soler-Llavina G, Sorensen SA, Wang Q, Waters J, Scanziani M, Koch C. PMID: 30419013; PMCID: PMC6258373.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 29 Fields:
Com Computational Biology
Translation:Animals Cells
The DeepTune framework for modeling and characterizing neurons in visual cortex area V4. bioArxiv. 2018. Reza Abbasi-Asl, Yuansi Chen, Adam Bloniarz, Michael Oliver, Ben DB Willmore, Jack L Gallant, Bin Yu. View Publication.
Interpreting Convolutional Neural Networks Through Compression. NIPS 2017 Symposium on Interpretable Machine Learning. 2017. Reza Abbasi-Asl, Bin Yu. View Publication.
Do retinal ganglion cells project natural scenes to their principal subspace and whiten them?. IEEE Proceedings of 50th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers. 2016. R. Abbasi-Asl, C. Pehlevan, B. Yu and D. B. Chklovskii. View Publication.
Automatic b-spline image registration using histogram-based landmark extraction. IEEE-EMBS Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Sciences. 2012. Abdollah Ghanbari, Reza Abbasi-Asl, Aboozar Ghaffari, Emad Fatemizadeh. View Publication.
Estimation of muscle force with emg signals using hammerstein-wiener model. 5th Kuala Lumpur International Conference on Biomedical Engineering. 2011. Reza Abbasi-Asl, Rahman Khorsandi, Shahrokh Farzampour, Edmond Zahedi. View Publication.
Hammerstein-Wiener model: A new approach to the estimation of formal neural information. Basic and Clinical Neuroscience. 4(3):45-51. Reza Abbasi-Asl, Rahman Khorsandi, Bijan Vosooghi-Vahdat. View Publication.