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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