Dr. Paul Thompson

Dr. Paul Thompson is not just an expert in Alzheimer’s disease and brain mapping – he’s also armed with an M.A. in Mathematics and Greek and Latin languages from Oxford University.

Currently, he serves as Director of the ENIGMA Center for Worldwide Medicine, Imaging and Genomics, a global alliance that brings together over 307 scientists in 33 countries who conduct studies on major brain diseases.

He is also the Associate Director of the Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, as well as a Professor in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, where he explores how neuroscience, mathematics, software engineering, and computer science can be used in neuroimaging and brain mapping. Notably, Dr. Thompson and his team created the first maps of Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia and traced their spread in living brains.

“This is the first study to use brain scans to show what this gene variant does, and it’s very surprising. This gene speeds up brain loss at a terrific pace. Carriers of this genetic mutation, who comprise about 1 percent of the population, lose about 3 percent of their brain tissue per year. This is a silent time bomb in 1 percent of the world.”
-Dr. Paul Thomas