Assoc Prof Helen Zhou Juan

 

Helen Zhou Juan
Associate Professor (tenured), Centre for Sleep and Cognition, Department of Medicine, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Singapore
Associate Professor (joint), Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorder Program, Duke-NUS, Singapore
Associate Professor (tenured, joint 20%), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NUS, Singapore
Director, Centre for Translational Magnetic Resonance Research, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Singapore
National University of Singapore
Tahir Foundation Building, 12 Science Drive 2, #13-05C, Singapore 117549
Tel: 66014918
Email: helen.zhou@nus.edu.sg
Website:
https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/researcher/a-prof-helen-zhou/
https://cde.nus.edu.sg/ece/staff/zhou-juan-helen
https://neuroimaginglab.org/members.html

Major Research Interests

My team studies the human neural bases of cognitive functions and the associated vulnerability patterns in aging and neuropsychiatric disorders using multimodal neuroimaging and psychophysical techniques. We are interested in the large-scale brain structural and functional networks in healthy developing and aging brain and symptoms-related changes in diseases such as neurodegenerative disorders and psychosis. Statistical, computational, and machine learning methods are developed to analyze and fuse multimodal neuroimaging data. By integrating longitudinal behavior, neuroimaging, and genotype data, our long-term goal is to investigate the interactions among brain network dynamics, behavior, diseases, and genotypes to develop non-invasive biomarkers for early detection, differential diagnosis, progression monitoring, and treatment design.

The current research interests in her lab include:

  • Detect early brain network changes and examine the influence of pathology and risk factors on brain integrity and future outcomes in preclinical and clinical neuropsychiatric disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, stroke, and psychosis.
  • Examine the longitudinal brain network changes and its associations with cognitive and mental problems across the lifespan.
  • Investigate the underlying neural mechanism supporting the efficacy of interventions such as BCI or lifestyle-based intervention to slow down cognitive decline.
  • Develop multimodal AI approaches such as brain foundation models for brain decoding, human trait prediction, disease prognosis/diagnosis, and treatment planning.

    • Recent Publications

    1. Chen Z, Qing J, Xiang T, Yue WL, Zhou JH. Seeing Beyond the Brain: Conditional Diffusion Model with Sparse Masked Modeling for Vision Decoding, The IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Vancouver, Canada, 2023. (NBC news/telegraph/CAN/Thomson)
    2. Ji F, Chai YL, Liu S, … Lai MKP*, Zhou JH*. Associations of blood cardiovascular biomarkers with brain free water and its relationship to cognitive decline: A diffusion-MRI study. Neurology (JIF: 12.258, Cover & Editorial).
    3. Nguyen TT, Qian X, Ng KK, … Zhou JH. Variations in cortical functional gradients relate to dimensions of psychopathology in preschool children. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2023 (JIF: 13.113, Editorial)
    4. Dong Z, Wu Y, Xiao Y, Chong JSX, Jin Y, Zhou JH. Beyond the Snapshot: Brain Tokenized Graph Transformer for Longitudinal Brain Functional Connectome Embedding, The International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), Vancouver, Canada, 2023.
    5. Chen Z*, Qing J*, Zhou JH. Cinematic Mindscapes: High-quality Video Reconstruction from Brain Activity. Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS Oral), New Orleans, US, 2023. (leading AI for neuroscience conference, highly competitive, <0.1%) (Oral, Scholar Award) 6. Yue W, Ng KK, Koh AJ, Perini F, Doshi K, Zhou JH^, Lim J^. Mindfulness-based therapy improves brain functional network reconfiguration efficiency, Translational Psychiatry (^ Joint senior authors) (JIF: 7.99). 7. Qian X, Zhou JH. Imaging lifespan brain structural growth: From region, to connectome, to gradient, Plos Biology, 2024 (JIF: 8.2). 8. Cheng SF, Yue WL, Ng KK, Qian X, Liu S, Tan TWK, Nguyen KN, Leong RLF, Hilal S, Cheng CY, Tan AP, Law EC, Gluckman PD, Chen CLH, Chong YS, Meaney MJ, Chee MWL, Yeo BTT, Zhou JH. Rate of brain aging associates with future executive function in Asian children and older adults, eLife, 2024 (JIF: 7.2). 9. Dong Z, Wu Y, Chen Z, Zhang Y, Jin Y, Zhou JH. Prompt Your Brain: Scaffold Prompt Tuning for Efficient Adaptation of fMRI Pre-trained Model. The International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), Marrakesh, Morocco, 2024.(Leading medical imaging conference, highly competitive) 10. Dong Z*, Li R*, Wu Y, Nguyen TT, Chong JSX, Ji F, Tong NRJ, Chen CLH, Zhou JH. Brain-JEPA: Brain Dynamics Foundation Model with Gradient Positioning and Spatiotemporal Masking. Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) Spotlight, Vancouver, Canada, 2024. (*Joint first) (CNA and Zaobao news) 11. Chong JSX, Ji F, Hilal S, Chong JR, Lau JM, Tong NR, Tan BY, Venketasubramanian N, Lai MK, Chen CL, Zhou JH. Additive effects of cerebrovascular disease functional connectome phenotype and plasma p-tau181 on longitudinal neurodegeneration and cognitive outcomes. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 2024. (JIF: 16.0) 12. Dong Z*, Wu Y*, Chen C*, Zou Y, Zhang Y, Zhou JH. Improve Representation for Imbalanced Regression through Geometric Constraints, The IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Nashville, US, 2025. (Leading AI conference, highly competitive) 13. Ooi LQR, Orban C, Zhang S, Nichols TE, Tan TWK, Kong R, Marek S, Dosenbach NUF, Laumann TO, Gordon EM, Yap KH, Ji F, Chong JSX, Chen C, An L, Franzmeier N, Roemer Cassiano SN, Hu Q, Ren J, Liu H, Chopra S, Cocuzza CV, Baker JT, Zhou JH, Bzdok D, Eickhoff SB, Holmes AJ, Yeo BTT, Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. Longer scans boost prediction and cut costs in brain wide association studies. Nature. 2025 Jul 16. (IF=54.4) 14. Liu S, Agartz I, Allen P, … Zhou JH. Structural Covariance Network Topology in Individuals at Clinical High Risk for Psychosis: the ENIGMA-CHR Study. Molecular Psychiatry (Accepted, IF =11.8) 15. Dong Z*, Li R*, Chong JSX, Dehestani N, Teng Y, Lin Y, Li Z, Zhang Y, Yapei X, Ooi LQR, Yeo BTT, Zhou JH. Brain Harmony: A Multimodal Foundation Model Unifying Morphology and Function into 1D Tokens. Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), San Diego, United States,2025. (*Joint first) (Top AI for Neuroscience Conference, 22% acceptance rate)