Lab Members

Dr. Ryan Darby's research interests involve using neurologic methods to investigate the anatomy, psychology, and philosophy involved in disorders of the brain.  In addition to being the lab's Principal Investigator, he runs the Vanderbilt Frontotemporal Dementia Clinic.

Dr. James Eaton is a neurologist and an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Eaton’s research interests include the interplay between inflammation and the immune system with neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Eaton sees memory referral patients as part of the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology in the Department of Neurology and serves as a co-investigator with the Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project and the Vanderbilt Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

Dr. Eaton completed medical school at the Zucker School of Medicine in New York. He completed his residency in neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical School followed by a neuroimmunology fellowship and a cognitive and behavioral neurology fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2022.

Dr. Ciaran Considine’s research interests involve investigation of the relationships between neuropsychological functioning, sleep disorders, and autonomic functioning within neurological conditions. He is the supervising neuropsychologist for the Vanderbilt site’s ALLFTD study, lead by Dr. Darby, as well an attending neuropsychologist for the Vanderbilt Frontotemporal Dementia Clinic.

Dr. Brown is a movement disorder specialist who is licensed to practice medicine in Tennessee and Kentucky, and has been a member of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology since 2019. She joined Vanderbilt University Medical Center faculty in July 2019 as a postgraduate movement disorders fellowship and has stayed on as an Assistant Professor.  She is the director of the VUMC CurePSP Center of Care. 

Jerica Reeder is a Senior Program Manager in the Department of Neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Psychology with a minor in Biology and Sociology from Tennessee Technological University. Jerica is the lead coordinator for ALLFTD working with various dementia-related disorders such as Frontotemporal Dementia, Primary Progressive Aphasia, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, Corticobasal Syndrome, FTD-Motor Neuron Disease and Alzheimer's Disease. In addition, she manages a few clinical drug trials for genetic carries of Frontotemporal Dementia. Jerica co-facilitates the FTD support group and FTD community events. 

Tony Phan is a Clinical/Translational Research Coordinator in the Darby Lab. He graduated from Princeton University in 2018 with a concentration in Molecular Biology and a certificate in Engineering Biology. He is studying the neurological basis of dementia symptoms, such as impairment of moral decision-making in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. He has heretofore been involved in coordinating patient research visits and administering assessments evaluating dementia symptom measures, as well as neuroradiological analyses relating alterations in functional and structural MRI to downstream dementia symptoms.

Lindsey Keener is a Clinical/Translational Research Coordinator in the Darby Lab. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a focus in Neuroscience from Vanderbilt University. While an undergraduate, Lindsey interned in the Darby Lab for two years, a valuable experience that culminated in a research project studying the association between lack of empathy in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients and their susceptibility to criminal antisocial behavior. Lindsey currently manages a number of PSP clinical trials: Amylyx ORION, Ferrer PROSPER, and CurePSP-Art Therapy. In addition, Lindsey helps out with the FTLD longitudinal, natural history study called ALLFTD. 

 Levi Pettit is a Clinical Research Coordinator I in the department of Neurology at VUMC. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN. Levi's primary research interests involve moral and ethical considerations relating to the care and treatment of neurodegenerative populations, the correlation between traumatic brain injury and neurodegeneration, and biomarkers of neurodegeneration. He is the primary coordinator for the study called, Decision-Making and Legal Problems in Dementia (MDM). This study is actively enrolling patients with a diagnosis of FTD, AD, and healthy aging adults.

Kiiya Shibata is a licensed speech-language pathologist and PhD student at Vanderbilt University. She completed her Bachelor of Arts (2013) and Master of Science (2015) in Communicative Disorders at San Francisco State University. After practicing as a clinician for six years in the areas of neurogenic communication disorders and voice disorders, she began the PhD program in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University. Her current research focuses on the relationship between frontotemporal lobar degeneration and laryngeal functioning. 

 Jayden joined the Department of Neurology as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2022 after completing her PhD in Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at Boston University where she worked on better understanding the functional localization of the language network. Her current research focuses on studying social cognitive and decision-making brain-behavior relationships in neurodegenerative diseases by relating neuropsychological and psychometric measures with multimodal MR imaging methods.

Behnaz Akbarian is a Biomedical Engineer, PhD Student. She was born in Tehran, Iran and obtained her MS degree from Iran University of Science and Technology. She commenced her graduate studies in 2022 with a keen interest in biomedical signal and image processing, fMRI, pattern recognition, EEG and ECoG recording and analyzing, intracortical recording, computational neuroscience, animal surgery and electrode implementation. Currently, her research endeavors are focusing on utilizing neuroimaging techniques to investigate brain diseases.

For further information about her research, please refer to her Google Scholar profile at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9Gqv4eYAAAAJ&hl=En.

Degree Summary: Major in Psychology, minors in Data Science and Human & Organizational Development

Interests in research: I am interested in the relationships between executive function and social-emotional behavior, specifically antisocial and aggressive behaviors. 

Hobby: Going on hikes and exploring new coffee shops!