Adolfo Cotter,MD

Brain-Mind Interface

Dr. Cotter practices Telemedicine in Primary Care. Conducts a competent, highly responsive Telemedicine practice since 2012, treating a variety of medical conditions from simple to very complex. Proficient with electronic medical records using a wide range of software packages and other forms of computing. Dr. Cotter also practiced Medicine doing Home Care, Urgent Care and Hospital Work.

Dr. Cotter has medical licenses in the states of Michigan, Indiana, and telehealth registration in the states of Minnesota and Florida. The links to the states medical boards are: Florida, http://www.flhealthsource.gov/telehealth/ Minnesota, https://mn.gov/boards/medical-practice/ Indiana, https://mylicense.in.gov/everification/ Michigan, https://www.michigan.gov/lara/0,4601,7-154-89334_72600_85566—,00.html

Dr. Adolfo Cotter founded Cognimetrix in 2007, motivated by a tremendous personal interest in the use of brain imaging data in the development of bionic based software to enhance creativity and intelligence.

Throughout his career, Dr. Cotter has performed brain imaging research in academic institutions such as Unversity of Toronto, University of Pennsylvania, and Emory University. He has also conducted brain imaging research for commercial companies such as at Cerebral Diagnostics.

Dr. Cotter has given lectures in Brain Imaging and attended numerous Brain Imaging meetings where he has presented his research projects. He has experience in brain imaging data acquisition and analysis for technologies such as PET, SPECT, MRI, fMRI and EEG. During his brain imaging analysis work, he has done biostatistics using a variety of software programs.

Mapping the Mind

As I mentioned on previous blog entries, I believe the brain and the mind overlap to some degree but also there should be a free brain area without mind and a free mind area without brain. Because our medications act on the brain but not on the mind itself, our knowledge of this interface is most useful to treat psychological and psychiatric conditions, in my opinion.

The Allen Brain Science Institute has identified over 20,000 genes responsible of brain activity and has created an atlas. Having this important knowledge, the next step would be to understand the effect and the functioning of these genes. Imaging studies such as fMRI and  MRI Spectroscopy could help understand these cellular processes by evaluating brain function and brain chemistry.

The NIH has started working on the Human Connectome Project looking for brain circuitry. In my opinion, understanding the brain circuitry related to mental processes and states as well as the cellular mechanisms involved, will help us develop drugs that will target more specifically mental activity with less side effects. Also, if we apply Pharmacogenomics to psychiatric medications, we will be able to more efficiently treat psychiatric conditions.

An interesting paper related to this topic is the following:

Jones, AR, etal, Mapping The Mind, Scientific American Mind, September/October 2010, pp 57 – 63.

Adolfo Cotter, MD

Oct 14/2010

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