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Professor
University of Iowa
I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
OMB No. 0925-0001 and 0925-0002 (Rev. 10/2021 Approved Through 09/30/2024)
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
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NAME: Tranel, Daniel
eRA COMMONS USER NAME (credential, e.g., agency login): Daniel_Tranel
POSITION TITLE: Professor of Neurology and Psychological and Brain Sciences
EDUCATION/TRAINING (Begin with baccalaureate or other initial professional education, such as nursing, include postdoctoral training and residency training if applicable. Add/delete rows as necessary.)
INSTITUTION AND LOCATION DEGREE
(if applicable)
Completion Date
MM/YYYY
FIELD OF STUDY
University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana BA 05/1979 Psychology
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa MA 07/1981 Clinical Psychology
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa PhD 12/1982 Clinical Psychology
University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City Postdoctoral 08/1984 Clinical Neuropsychology
A. Personal Statement
I am a cognitive neuroscientist and board-certified clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Iowa, with joint appointments in the College of Medicine (Neurology) and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Psychological and Brain Sciences). My scientific work is conducted in the Division of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. I work as a clinician (licensed clinical neuropsychologist) in the Benton Neuropsychology Clinic. I have a long track record in cognitive neuroscience and clinical neuropsychology, including oversight of the Iowa Neurological Patient Registry. I have trained many students during my career, including undergraduate, graduate, medical, MD/PhD, and postdoctoral students, as well as many junior faculty. Most of my former trainees are now in tenured, tenure-stream, or postdoctoral positions. I have served on 93 PhD committees, 35 as Chair, and have supervised 54 postdoctoral scholars. I have focused especially on training students from diverse backgrounds, and have served on 18 PhD committees (8 as Chair) for underrepresented students. I teach graduate and undergraduate courses at Iowa. My laboratory has been continuously funded (mainly by NIH) since 1983. Over the course of my career, I have maintained a commitment to clinical practice and operating a fully funded laboratory, and have published peer-reviewed articles and books on topics involving clinical neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience.
My research program has a strong translation focus, as most of my “research subjects” are neurological patients with focal brain lesions and the science is directly applicable to their clinical care. I have collaborated extensively with neurologists, psychiatrists, and neurosurgeons, including research projects that involve Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials.
a. Lezak, M. D., Howieson, D., Bigler, E., and Tranel, D. (2012). Neuropsychological assessment (5th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. PMCID N/A
b. Harris, S., Bowren, M., Anderson, S.W., & Tranel, D. Does brain damage caused by stroke versus trauma have different neuropsychological outcomes? A lesion-matched multiple case study. Applied Neuropsychology: Adult, (in press)
c. Deifelt Streese, C., Manzel, K., Wu, J., & Tranel, D. (2022). Lateralized differences for verbal learning across trials in temporal lobe epilepsy are not affected by surgical intervention. Epilepsy and Behavior, 128, 128:108561 PMCID: PMC8898285
d. Reber, J., Bruss, J., Bowren, M., Hwang, K., Mukherjee, P., Tranel, D., & Boes, A. (2021). Cognitive impairment after focal brain lesions is better predicted by damage to structural than functional network hubs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118, e2018784118. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2018784118. PMCID PMC8126860.
B. Positions, Scientific Appointments, and Honors
Positions and Scientific Appointments (current unless otherwise indicated)
2018 EPPP-2 Examination Committee (Chair), Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards
2018 NST-1 Clinical Scientist Training Grant Study Section, NIH (NINDS; permanent member 2021)
2016-20 Editorial Board, American Psychologist
2014 Associate Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, University of Iowa College of Medicine
2009-16 EPPP-1 Examination Committee, Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards
2009-13 Training in Workforce Development Study Section, NIH (NIGMS)
2007-14 Associate Editor, Neuropsychology
2002-06 Cognitive Neuroscience Study Section, NIH (Chairperson, 2004-2006)
2003-18 Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
2000 Director, Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Iowa
1994 Professor, Department of Neurology, University of Iowa College of Medicine
1994 Professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa
1990 Associate Professor, Department of Neurology, University of Iowa College of Medicine
1986 Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology, University of Iowa College of Medicine
1986 Chief, Benton Neuropsychology Clinic, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics
Honors and Certifications
2017 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
2009 State of Iowa Regents Award for Faculty Excellence
2009/2019 Summer Research Opportunities Program/McNair Diversity Mentoring Award, University of Iowa
1996 Elected to the Board of the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology
1995 Fellow, American Psychological Society
1993 Fellow, American Psychological Association (Divisions 12 and 40)
1988 Diplomate, American Board of Professional Psychology/Clinical Neuropsychology (ABPP/Cn)
1985 Licensed Psychologist, State of Iowa (#00493)
C. Contributions to Science
1. In the first part of my career, I collaborated closely with the Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Research Team at the University of Iowa (led by Antonio and Hanna Damasio), building the world-renown Iowa Neurological Patient Registry. My scientific contributions included discoveries of non-conscious face recognition in patients with prosopagnosia and impaired processing of fear in patients with amygdala lesions. The work in face recognition, which took advantage of my graduate training in psychophysiology (e.g., electrodermal activity, heart rate), provided a paradigm for exploring non-conscious neural processing that has been widely leveraged in cognitive neuroscience over subsequent decades, in my lab and by many others. The paper I published in 1990 with Bradley Hyman was the seminal publication of patient SM, who became a household name in cognitive neuroscience for her impaired fear processing associated with focal bilateral amygdala damage.
a. Tranel, D., and Damasio, A. R. (1985). Knowledge without awareness: An autonomic index of facial recognition by prosopagnosics. Science, 228, 1453-1454.
b. Tranel, D., and Damasio, A. R. (1988). Nonconscious face recognition in patients with face agnosia. Behavioural Brain Research, 30, 235-249.
c. Tranel, D., Damasio, A. R., and Damasio, H. (1988). Intact recognition of facial expression, gender, and age in patients with impaired recognition of face identity. Neurology, 38, 690-696.
d. Tranel, D., and Hyman, B. T. (1990). Neuropsychological correlates of bilateral amygdala damage. Archives of Neurology, 47, 349-355.
2. In the next phase of my career, I again took advantage of my expertise in psychophysiology, this time focusing on the neural correlates of emotion. In collaboration with the Damasios, we discovered a key deficit in patients with ventromedial prefrontal lesions, namely, impaired processing of the emotional significance of various stimuli. This led to a longstanding program of work exploring emotional processing in patients with prefrontal damage, and also produced the “Iowa Gambling Task” (IGT) that was developed in collaboration with Antoine Bechara, who was at that time a postdoctoral student in our lab (the IGT has been featured in more than 375 scientific studies since our seminal publication of the task in 1994). This work ultimately provided the empirical foundation for Antonio Damasio’s widely regarded “somatic marker hypothesis.” A second line of work during this period focused on drilling into the details of the role of the amygdala in various types of social and emotional processes, work in which I collaborated closely with Ralph Adolphs, who was at the time a postdoctoral student in my lab. This research has been helpful in understanding mechanisms associated with disorders such as autism, posttraumatic stress disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.
a. Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Damasio, H., and Damasio, A.R. (1994). Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala. Nature, 372, 669-672.
b. Bechara, A., Tranel, D., Damasio, H., Adolphs, R., Rockland, C., and Damasio, A.R. (1995). Double dissociation of conditioning and declarative knowledge relative to the amygdala and hippocampus in humans. Science, 269, 1115-1118.
c. Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., and Damasio, A.R. (1997). Deciding advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy. Science, 275, 1293-1295.
d. Feinstein, J.S., Adolphs, R., Damasio, A.R., and Tranel, D. (2011). The human amygdala and the induction and experience of fear. Current Biology, 21, 34-38. PMCID: PMC3030206.
3. A line of work that has remained prominent in my laboratory is studying the neural basis of memory. We have done this through lesion studies and functional imaging (fMRI), and have taken advantage of productive collaborations with other labs (Neal Cohen, University of Illinois; Steve Petersen, Washington University). We have investigated the intersection of memory with other cognitive domains, especially language and emotion, and have used fMRI and “lesion probes” to study neural networks.
a. Duff, M.C., Hengst, J., Tranel, D., and Cohen, N.J. (2006). Development of shared information in communication despite hippocampal amnesia. Nature Neuroscience, 9, 140-146.
b. Feinstein, J.S., Duff, M.C., and Tranel, D. (2010). Sustained experience of emotion after loss of memory in patients with amnesia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 7674-7679. PMCID: PMC2867870
c. Warren, D.E., Jones, S.H., Duff, M.C., and Tranel, D. (2014). False recall is reduced by damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex: Implications for understanding the neural correlates of schematic memory. Journal of Neuroscience, 34, 7677-7682. PMCID: PMC4035527
d. Warren, D.E., Power, J.D., Bruss, J., Denburg, N.L., Waldron, E.J., Sun, H., Petersen, S.E., and Tranel, D. (2014). Network measures predict neuropsychological outcome after brain injury. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 111, 14247-14252. PMCID PMC4191760.
4. Another prominent line of work is our ongoing exploration of various kinds of emotion-related and social conduct deficits in patients with ventromedial prefrontal lesions. We have explored sex-related differences and have investigated various kinds of moral judgment deficits in our patients. We have also explored how interoception is mediated by higher brain centers. This work has been critical in helping to provide empirical adjudication of various hypotheses regarding the neural basis of consciousness. Our studies on moral reasoning have fueled interdisciplinary work that pulls in scientists from fields such as philosophy and judgment and decision making. Our access to patients with focal brain lesions has provided a key test-bed for theories that were derived from functional imaging work, given that a neuropsychological approach can help establish whether certain brain systems are necessary for various cognitive and behavioral functions.
a. Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., and Damasio, A. (2007). Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments. Nature, 446, 908-911. PMCID: PMC2244801
b. Khalsa, S.S., Rudrauf, D., Feinstein, J.S., and Tranel, D. (2009). The pathways of interoceptive awareness. Nature Neuroscience, 12, 1494-1496. PMCID: PMC2787640
c. Taber-Thomas, B.C., Asp, E.W., Koenigs, M., Sutterer, M., Anderson, S.W., & Tranel, D. (2014). Arrested development: Early prefrontal lesions impair the maturation of moral development. Brain, 137, 1254-1261. PMCID PMC 3959552.
d. Reber, J., Feinstein, J., O’Doherty, J., Liljeholm, M., Adolphs, R., & Tranel, D. (2017). Selective impairment of goal-directed decision-making following lesions to the human ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Brain, 140, 1743-1756. doi:10.1093/brain/awx105 PMCID: PMC6075075
5. Taking advantage of the unique Iowa Patient Registry (which includes several thousand patients, allowing N’s for specific studies to be on the order of many hundreds of patients), we have mapped the neural correlates of intelligence, decision-making, and cognitive control. We have cross-validated our findings in a second cohort of patients, taking advantage of a collaboration with colleagues at Washington University.
a. Gläscher, J., Tranel, D., Paul, L.K., Rudrauf, D., Rorden, C., Hornaday, A., Grabowski, T., Damasio, H., & Adolphs, R. (2009). Lesion mapping of cognitive abilities linked to intelligence. Neuron, 61, 681-691. PMCID PMC2728583.
b. Gläscher, J., Adolphs, R., Damasio, H., Bechara, A., Rudrauf, D., Calamia, M., Paul, L.K., & Tranel, D. (2012). Lesion mapping of cognitive control and value-based decision-making in the prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 14681-14686. PMCID PMC3437894.
c. Gläscher, J., Adolphs, R., & Tranel, D. (2019). Model-based lesion mapping of cognitive control using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Nature Communications, 10, 20 doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-07912-5 . PMCID PMC6318292
d. Bowren, M.D., Adolphs, R., Bruss, J., Manzel, K., Corbetta, M., Tranel, D., & Boes, A.D. (2020). Multivariate lesion-behavior mapping of general cognitive ability and its psychometric constituents. Journal of Neuroscience, 40, 8924-8937. PMCID: PMC7659456
From Google Scholar and Web of Science (as of January 2022): >375 publications; current h-index = 128
Complete List of Published Work in MyBibliography (ca. 2007 to present):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/browse/collection/40199514/?sort=date&direction=ascending
