People

Staffs

  Prof. Chao-Gan Yan

Dr. Chao-Gan Yan is a professor at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IPCAS). He is the Director of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Center, the Director of International Big-Data Center for Depression Research, and the Principal Investigator of The R-fMRI Lab located at IPCAS. Before he joined the IPCAS in 2015, he worked as a Research Scientist at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Yan received his Ph.D. degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning at Beijing Normal University in 2011. His research mainly focuses on the resting-state fMRI (R-fMRI) computational methodology, mechanisms of spontaneous brain activity, and their applications in depression. He has addressed fundamental methodological issues (e.g., impact of head motion (ESI Top 1‰ of highly cited papers), standardization (ESI Top 1% of highly cited papers) and multiple comparison correction (ESI Top 1% of highly cited papers)) on the study of resting-state functional connectomics. He has also developed data processing and analysis toolbox for R-fMRI, DPABI (ESI Top 0.01% of highly cited papers) and DPARSF, with the latter has been cited over 2000 times. He initiated a Chinese consortium for big data of brain imaging of depression (REST-meta-MDD), performed big data study of depression neuroimaging (PNAS 2019, ESI Top 1% of highly cited papers), and studied the brain mechanisms of depression through a longitudinal study of animal model. He has published 80+ peer-reviewed articles (40+ as first or corresponding author) in prestigious journals including PNAS, Molecular Psychiatry, NeuroImage, Human Brain Mapping. His work has been widely cited in the scientific community (total citations > 16000, http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lJQ9B58AAAAJ), achieving an h-index of 39. Six of his first-author/corresponding author papers ranked as ESI Top 1% Highly Cited Papers (including 1 Top 0.01% and 1 Top 0.1%). He has been ranked as 2019 and 2020 most cited Chinese Researchers by Elsevier. He was awarded the 2021 Early Career Investigator Award by The Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM). Additionally, he currently serves as associate editor for Neuroimage: Reports and servers in the editorial boards of NeuroImage and Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

 
 

  Xiao Chen

Assistant research fellow in cognitive neuroscience
Xiao Chen is an assistant research fellow at R-fMRI Lab in the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He completed his PhD training in cognitive neuroscience at Institute of Psychology. He systematically evaluated the reproducibility of resting-state fMRI and gave recommendations on the strategy of multiple comparison correction. He also developed a “rumination state” paradigm to induce participants into rumination state in the MRI scanner and investigated the network mechanism underlying rumination. He is now working on fMRI data from patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and SEEG data from patients with epilepsy in rumination state.
 
 

 

 

 

Bin Lu

Dr. Bin Lu is a postdoc in Prof. Yan’s Lab. He got bachelor’s degree in aircraft design and engineering from northwestern polytechnical university and got Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from Institute of Psychology, CAS. His research interest is the application of MRI on brain disorders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PhD students

  Hui-Xian Li

Hui-Xian Li is a graduate student in Prof. Yan’s Lab. She got her B.S. degree from Xinxiang Medical University in 2017. She is broadly interested in exploring brain representations of the stream of thought (the self-generated thought) at resting-state. She is also interested in how to distinguish between different forms of self-generated thought.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zi-Han Wang

Zi-Han Wang is a Ph.D candidate in Prof. Yan's Lab. She studied Internet of Things engineering as an undergraduate at Beijing University of Technology. In 2018, she was recommended to study computer science and technology at the same university. Her main research interests are brain network analysis and neuropsychiatric diagnosis using machine learning methods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Xue-Ying Li

Xue-Ying is a graduate student in Prof. Yan’s Lab in the Institute of Psychology, CAS. She obtained her BEng degree with a B.A. minor degree from the China Agricultural University in 2019. She has strong interests in exploring the relationship between the DSM and the RDoc Matrix on MDD using Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and in finding reliable and effective TMS targets and protocols for MDD treatment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yu-Wei Wang

Yuwei is a Ph.D candidate in Prof. Yan's Lab. Before graduate school, Yuwei received a Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from Tianjin University in 2017. Yuwei regards the research life is an adventure towards herself. She wants to help, even though in the end she could have helped no one, but hopefully herself. For now, she loves what happened to her - a work meets her purpose for help, beloved friends and family, nice research mates and teachers, even though she has to work underground. She says she loves human brain, though she barely knows it.

 
 

 

 

Master Students

  Zhao-Yu Deng

Zhao-Yu Deng is a postgraduate student in Prof. Yan’s Lab in the Institute of Psychology, CAS. He received his B.S. degree in Electronic Information Technology as well as Applied Psychology from Hunan Normal University in 2020. He is well trained in computer science. His main research interests are the fusion of tractography structural connectivity and R-fMRI functional connectivity network between brain disease patients and healthy people, as well as their high-level feature and machine learning classifier. E-mail: isaaczydeng@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

  

Shi-Xian Cui

Cui Shi-Xian is a graduate student in Prof. Yan’s Lab in the Institute of Psychology, CAS. She graduated from Henan Agricultural University and received a bachelor’s degree in agronomy in 2020. Her strong interest in studying brain imaging for depression drove her to come to Dr. Yan’s group for in-depth study and research. At present, the main direction of her research is to explore the cultural difference of neural substrate underlying depression between East Asians and Westerners，to provide reference for finding diagnostic indicators and treatment methods that can be promoted across races.

 

 

  

Zhengjiayi Hu

Hu is a graduate student in Prof. Yan’s Lab in the Institute of Psychology, CAS. She graduated from Nanjing Normal University and received a bachelor’s degree in Psychology in 2022. She is trying to explore the application of gradient patterns of macroscale cortical organization in the brain in MDD. And she is interested in exploring the brain mechanisms and treatment of MDD using Magnetic Resonance Imaging, especially the similarities and differences between medication treatment and psychotherapy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chen-Nan Wu

Chen-Nan Wu received her postgraduate recommendation and joined Prof. Yan’s Lab in 2022 and will formally pursue a master's degree from September 2023. She received her undergraduate degree in the School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University. Her learning motivation is learning more about brain image technology to reveal the neural mechanism of cognitive process and add new perspective to classsical psychology problems. Her current research interest lies in the influence of Oriental thinking on depression, as well as the prevention and intervention measures of depression.

 

 

 

 

  

Han-Lin Wang

Wang will officially join the lab in September 2023. As an undergraduate, he studied biomedical engineering at Capital Medical University. At present, he has not made clear his future research direction, but he learned about the current status of diagnosis and treatment of brain diseases during his undergraduate study, and he is eager to make contributions to the precise diagnosis and treatment of brain diseases by using neuroimaging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research Assitants

  Yi-Fan Liao

Yifan is working as a research assistant with Prof. Yan at the R-fMRI Lab, mainly in charge of running the “Mind Flower”Research Project, a longitudinal multimodal neuroimaging research on the neural mechanisms and interventions for depression. She completed her Master of Research degree in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology (MRes DNP) at University College London and Yale University. During her MRes degree, she studied psychoanalytic theories at Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families and focused on researching the neural mechanisms of emotion regulation in children and adolescents. Before graduate school, she received her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from the University of Exeter in 2019. She did research in the effects of mindfulness training on attention using EEG. She is now interested in non-pharmacological interventions for depression, particularly focusing on the psychological processes and neuro-cognitive mechanisms that underpin changes in psychological interventions.

 

 

 

 

Tao Lian

Tao Lian is a research assistant in Prof. Yan's lab in the Institute of Psychology, CAS. He received his bachelor's degree from the School of Management, Hebei University and his master's degree from the Department of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University. During his graduate studies, he used functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure brain activity in multiple interactions to explore the neural mechanisms underlying social pain and empathy. He is interested in neurofeedback and neuroregulation and expects to apply the above technologies to help patients with mental illness relieve or even cure their symptoms in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visiting students

  Kai Shao

Kai is a visiting student in Prof. Yan’s Lab. She got her bachelor’s and master’s degree at Hebei Medical University. She is now studying for her doctor of medicine degree in Xuanwu Hospital of Capital Medical University. Her research focuses on exploring the potential biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) based on multimodal image to build the early diagnostic model of AD in the Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD) individuals of China.

 

 

 

 

  

 

De-Sheng Xuan

De-Sheng Xuan is a visiting student in Prof. Yan’s Lab. He is an attending physician in the Department of Radiology, the Third Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University. He has received his Master of Medicine degree in Zhengzhou University. His main research direction is using multi-modal MRI  to study neural development and neurological diseases in infants and young children, so as to achieve early screening, early diagnosis and early intervention.  E-mail: xuan100321008@163.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alumni

  Ning-Xuan Chen

Ning-Xuan was a doctoral student in Prof. Yan’s Lab. Now working at Capital Normal University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zhi-Chen Zhu

Zhi-Chen was a graduate student in Prof. Yan's Lab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Le Li

Le Li was a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Yan's Lab. Now working in Center for the Cognitive Science of Language, Beijing Language and Culture University.

Main Research Field: Language-cognitive neuroscience, Second language acquisition and cognitive processing, Characterization and processing mechanisms in Chinese and English.