Behzad Iravani

Behzad Iravani

Postdoctoral Researcher
Visiting address: Nobels väg 9, D3, 17165 Solna
Postal address: K8 Klinisk neurovetenskap, K8 Neuro Fransson, 171 77 Stockholm
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About me

  • I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Large-Scale Network Connectivity in the Human Brain Lab, Karolinska Institutet. My research is focused on both invasive and non-invasive brain imaging, using a variety of analytic tools.

     

  • Ph.D. in Medicine - Clinical Neuroscience 


  • M.Sc. in Biomedical - Bioelectric Engineering
    B.Sc. in Telecommunication Engineering

Research

  • I have developed a non-invasive method, the so-called electrobulbogram (EBG), to record from a human olfactory bulb (OB). In this method, we placed 4 active electrodes on the forehead of individuals following the outline of their 

  • eyebrows. Assessing the spectrogram reveals that EBG can detect the 
  • characteristics of gamma oscillations of OB. We have further validated this method 
  • in several experiments. Non-invasive recording from the human olfactory bulb 
  • [1].

     

  • Our EBG method has shown promising results where we could demonstrate that odor valence processing during the first sniff in humans is a sequential process consisting of early and late processes. The oscillatory behavior of 

  • these processes is different, and so does their functional role. Specifically,  
  • we indicated that the early process cues avoidance motor response in 
  • humans. The human olfactory bulb processes odor valence representation and 
  • cues motor avoidance behavior [2].

     

  • Moreover, using EBG we further demonstrated that the odor identity can be deciphered from the connectivity between OB and piriform cortex (PC) as 

  • early as 100ms post odor onset. We also found that the oscillation in 
  • the OB-PC connectivity evolves from fast gamma oscillations to slower theta 
  • oscillations during late time points. Additionally, the afferent and efferent 
  • connections of OB-PC are found to operate in gamma/beta and delta/theta 
  • respectively. Odor identity can be extracted from the reciprocal 
  • connectivity between the olfactory bulb and the piriform cortex in humans [3].

    Given that OB is the first area of insult in Parkinson's disease (PD),  
  • measuring the OB function seems to be a relevant candidate for early
    diagnosis of PD. Yet there was no non-invasive method to measure OB function 
  • in humans until we developed EBG. Using EBG we demonstrated that the 
  • differences in the oscillator olfactory processes during the first sniff can 
  • dissociate PD patients from age-matched healthy controls with sensitivity of 
  • 90% and specificity of 100%, values comparable to clinical odor identification tests. Consequently, this finding puts EBG as a potentially best method for early diagnosis of PD that has to be validated in future works. A 
  • non-invasive olfactory bulb measure dissociates Parkinson's patients from 
  • healthy controls and discloses disease duration [4].

    [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32005822
    [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34645711
    [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33951509
    [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8373926

Articles

All other publications

Employments

  • Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, 2022-2025

Degrees and Education

  • Degree Of Doctor Of Philosophy, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, 2021

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