Scott Grafton

Distinguished Recall Professor

Research Area

Cognition, Perception, and Cognitive Neuroscience

Biography

Scott Grafton received BA's in Mathematics and Psychobiology from the University of California at Santa Cruz and his MD degree from the University of Southern California. He completed a Neurology residency at the University of Washington and a residency in Nuclear Medicine at UCLA. He was a research fellow in Neuroimaging at UCLA where he developed methods for mapping human brain activity using positron emission tomography. With this he focused on brain plasticity during motor learning and the reorganization of the nervous system in the face of injury or neurodegeneration. He went on to develop brain imaging programs at University of Southern California, Emory University and Dartmouth College. He joined the UCSB faculty in 2006 and is director of the UCSB Imaging Center. The center uses fMRI, magnetic stimulation and high density EEG to characterize the neural basis of goal directed behavior.

Research

Professor Grafton is interested in how people organize movement into goal-oriented action. The emphasis is on elucidating the cognitive architecture that underlies action representation. This is developed with studies of sequence and skill acquisition, motor simulation, sensorimotor transformation, on-line control and action observation experiments. Brain-behavior relationships are defined using fMRI, transcranial magnetic stimulation, patient based research and high-density electroencephalography.

Selected Publications

Volz LJ, Cieslak M, Grafton ST. A probabilistic atlas of fiber crossings for variability reduction of anisotropy measures. Brain Structure and Function. 223:635-651, 2018.

Reddy P, Mattar M, Murphy A, Wymbs N, Grafton S, Satterthwaite T, Bassett DB. Brain State Flexibility Accompanies Motor-Skill Acquisition. NeuroImage. 171: 135-147, 2018.

Gu S, Cieslak M, Baird B, Muldoon SF, Grafton ST, Pasqualetti F, Bassett DS. The Energy Landscape of Neurophysiological Activity Implicit in Brain Network Structure. Scientific Reports, 8:2507, 2018.

Mattar MG, Wymbs NF, Bock AS, Aguirre GK, Grafton ST, Bassett DS. Predicting future learning from baseline network architecture. NeuroImage. 172: 107-117, 2018.

Marneweck M, Barany DA, Santello M, Grafton ST. Neural representations of sensorimotor memory- and digit position-based load force adjustments before the onset of dexterous object manipulation. J Neuroscience. 38:4724-4737, 2018.

Grafton ST and Volz LJ. From ideas to action: The prefrontal-premotor connections that shape motor behavior. In: D'Esposito M, Grafman JH, (Eds). Handbook of Clinical Neurology. Vol 163 (3rd series). The Frontal Lobes. Elsevier, Amsterdam.  2019. 

Shapiro AD, Grafton ST. Subjective value then confidence in human ventromedial prefrontal cortex. PLoS ONE 15(2): e0225617, 2020.

Marneweck M, Grafton ST. Representational neural mapping of dexterous grasping before lifting in humans. J Neurosci 40:2708-2717, 2020.

Marneweck M, Grafton ST. Neural substrates of anticipatory motor adaptation for object lifting. Scientific Reports 10: 10430, 2020.  

Dundon NM, Garrett N, Babenko V, Cieslak M, Daw ND, Grafton ST. Sympathetic involvement in time-constrained sequential foraging. Cognitive Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience. 20:730-745, 2020.

Berlot E, Popp NJ, Grafton ST, Diecrichsen J. Combining repetition suppression and pattern analysis provides new insights into the role of M1 and parietal areas in skilled sequential actions. J Neurosci. 41: 7649-7661, 2021.

Dundon N, Shapiro AD, Babenko V, Okafor GN, Grafton ST. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity and sympathetic allostasis during value-based ambivalence. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. 15: 615796, 2021.

Mitchell B, Marneweck M, Petzold L, Grafton S. Motor Adaptation via Distributional Learning. J Neural Eng. 18: 046049, 2021. 

Cieslak M, Cook PA, He X, Yeh F-C, Dhollander T, Adebimpe A, Aguirre GK, Bassett DS, Betzel RF, Bourque J,  Cabral LM, Davatzikos C, Detre J, Earl E, Elliott MA, Fadnavis S, Fair DA, Foran W, Fotiadis P, Garyfallidis E, Giesbrecht B, Gur RC, Gur RE, Kelz M, Keshavan A, Larsen BS, Luna B, Mackey AP, Milham MP, Oathes DJ,  Perrone A, Pines AR, Roalf DR, Richie-Halford A, Rokem A, Sydnor VJ, Tinashe M. Tapera TM, Tooley UA, Vettel JM, Yeatman JD, Grafton ST, Satterthwaite TD. QSIPrep: An integrative platform for preprocessing and reconstructing diffusion MRI. Nature Methods. 18: 775-778, 2021.

Colas JT, Dundon NM, Gerraty RT, Saragosa-Harris NM, Szymula KP, Tanwisuth K, Tyszka JM, van Geen C, Ju H, Toga AW, Gold JI, Bassett DS, Hartle CA, Shohamy D, Grafton ST, O'Doherty JP. Reinforcement learning with associative or discriminative generalization across states and actions: fMRI at 3 T and 7 T. Human Brain Mapping. 43: 4750– 4790, 2022.  

Paul T, Cieslak M, Hensel L, Wiemer VM, Grefkes C, Grafton ST, Fink GR, Volz LJ. The role of corticospinal and extrapyramidal pathways in motor impairment after stroke. Brain Communications. 5: fcac301, 2023.

Habituation of the Stress Response Multiplex to Repeated Cold Pressor Exposure. Bullock T, MacLean MH, Santander T, Boone AP, Babenko V, Dundon NM, Stuber A, Jimmons L, Raymer J, Okafor GN, Miller MB, Barry Giesbrecht B, Grafton ST. Frontiers Physiology. 13:752900, 2023.

Dundon, NM, Colas JT, Garrett N, Babenko V, Rizor E, Yang D, MacNamara M, Petzold L, Grafton ST. Decision heuristics in contexts integrating action selection and execution. Scientific Reports. 13:6486, 2023.

Shailja S, Grafton ST, Manjunath BS. ReTrace: Topological insight to evaluation of white matter tractography using Reeb graphs. International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) Workshop on Computational Diffusion MRI (CDMRI), 2023.

Shailja S, Bhagavatula V, Cieslak M, Vettel JM, Grafton ST, Manjunath BS. ReeBundle: a method for topological modeling of white matter pathways using diffusion MRI. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. 42:3725-3737, 2023.

Hopp FR, Amir O, Fisher JT, Grafton S, Sinnott-Armstrong W, Weber R. Moral Foundations Elicit Shared and Dissociable Cortical Activation Modulated by Political Ideology. Nature Human Behavior. Published on line, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01693-8.

Paul T, Wiemer VM, Hensel L, Cieslak M, Tscherpel C, Grefkes C, Grafton ST, Fink GR, Volz LJ. Interhemispheric structural connectivity underlies motor recovery after stroke. Ann Neurology. 94:785–797, 2023.

Chu H-Y, Smith Y, Lytton WW, Grafton S, Villalba R, Masilamoni G, Wichmann T. Dysfunction of Motor Cortices in Parkinson’s disease. Cerebral Cortex. 34:bhae294, 2024.

Rizor EJ, Babenko V, Dundon NM, Beverly-Aylwin R, Stump A, Hayes M, Herschenfeld-Catalan L, Jacobs EG, Grafton ST. Menstrual cycle-driven hormone concentrations co-fluctuate with white and grey matter architecture changes across the whole brain. Human Brain Mapping. 45:e26785, 2024.

Colas J, O'Doherty J, Grafton ST. Active reinforcement learning versus action bias and hysteresis: control with a mixture of experts and nonexperts. PLOS Comp Biol. 20:e1011950, 2024.

Stump A, Gregory C, Babenko V, Rizor E, Bullock T, Macy A, Giesbrecht B, Grafton ST, Dundon NM. Non-invasive monitoring of cardiac contractility: Trans-Radial Electrical Bioimpedance Velocimetry. Psychophysiology. e14411, 2024. 

Cieslak M, Cook PA, Tapera TM, Radhakrishnan H, Elliott M, Roalf D, Oathes DJ, Bassett DS, Tisdall D, Rokem A, Grafton ST, Satterthwaite T. Diffusion MRI head motion correction methods are highly accurate but impacted by denoising and sampling scheme. Human Brain Mapping. 45:e26570, 2024.

Paul T, Wiemer VM, Hensel L, Cieslak M, Tscherpel C, Grefkes, Grafton ST, Fink GR, Volz LJ. Corticospinal premotor fibers facilitate complex motor control after stroke. Ann Clin Translational Neurology, 2024, doi: 10.1002/acn3.52159.