Randall Benson, M.D. is a neurologist and neuroscientist on the faculty at Wayne State Univerity School of Medicine and an attending at Detroit Receiving and Harper University Hospitals at DMC since 2001. With fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital in both cognitive neuroscience and functional neuroimaging (1991-1996), Dr. Benson was one of the first people to apply the functional MRI technique to cognitive brain mapping in humans and continues to use fMRI both clinically in presurgical patients and as a method of monitoring adaptive plasticity in stroke patients following targeted brain stimulation. As the only behavioral neurologist at DMC, he diagnoses and treats many patients with memory, language and cognitive/behavioral issues including TBI, stroke and dementia. Prior to coming to WSU/DMC, while in Connecticut (UConn), he successfully delineated the major neural network for speech perception. Currently, his group is using transcranial magnetic stimulation in conjunction with fMRI in an effort to improve language impairment in stroke patients.

Since arriving at WSU/DMC in 2001, Dr. Benson has collaborated closely with E. Mark Haacke, Ph.D. in applying newer imaging techniques such as SWI, DTI and MRSI to traumatic brain injury. They have several seminal publications in these areas demonstrating the exquisite sensitivity of these three methods to even mild TBI. The goals of the group, which is part of a larger collaboration with Biomechanical Engineering (Drs. Cavanaugh, King and Yang, the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan (Drs. Hanks, Millis and Meythaler) and Loma Linda University (Drs. Tong and Holshouser), include improved diagnostic and prognostic ability as well as the discovery of injury surrogates or biomarkers with which to test putative TBI treatment.