Jonathan Kalkstein, M.D., Ph.D.

Address:
UCSF MC 2512
Mission Bay – Byers Hall Room 102C
1700 4th Street
San Francisco, CA 94158-2330

email: jonathan.kalkstein at ucsf dot edu
lab: 415-476-2164
fax: 415-514-4451

Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
       
Biography:  Jon is originally from the Philadelphia area. His undergraduate work was in Applied Physics, with a focus in biophysics, at Cornell University. Though he maintains a lasting affection for Ithaca, he was compelled to escape the frigid cold and regular doses of the wet and icy precipitation that the natives affectionately call “Ithacation”, and headed south to the University of Miami for a combined MD/PhD program. During graduate school, under the mentorship of Karl Magleby, Jon studied short-term, activity-dependant modulation of synaptic transmission. He started a postdoctoral fellow in the Gazzaley lab and continued clinical training in the psychiatry residency training program at UCSF. He continues as a postdoc in the lab during a Psychiatry and Neuroscience Fellow at USCF and the San Francisco VA. He remains active in clinical care with an interest in ADHD, Schizophrenia. The primary goal of his research is to better characterize the deficits in connections between multiple brain areas (neural networks) that underlie these disorders and changes in normal aging.

Research Description:  The overarching goal of Jon’s research is to better characterize the deficits in connections between multiple brain areas (neural networks) that underlie the pathology in Schizophrenia and changes in normal aging. Currently, his primary focus is on changes in Mental imagery that occur with aging. Mental imagery is integral to a wide variety of cognitive abilities, including reasoning, spatial navigation, and memory. Cognitive aging is associated with impairments in these same abilities, and thus diminished fidelity of mental images in older adults may underlie such deficits. However, an age-related deficit in mental imagery and its role in memory impairment is still a matter of debate. Previous fMRI evidence demonstrated that visual imagery activates representations in category-selective visual cortex via top-down control mechanisms. This project uses fMRI to characterize selectivity of visual cortex activation during visual imagery and selectivity of functional connections between prefrontal cortex and visual regions. The project also examines the relationship between imagery selectivity and visual memory in older adults. Jon also has an interest in applying multi voxel pattern analysis to characterize imagery selectivity in an EEG study of younger adults.

Publications:

Kalkstein, J. and Magleby, K., "Augmentation increases vesicular release probability in the presence of masking depression at the frog neuromuscular junction", The Journal of Neuroscience. Dec. 15, 2004; 24 (50): pp. 11391-403. (pdf)