Dr. Maria Hakonen is an Instructor (Research Faculty) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School. She has extensive experience studying human brain function using 3T/7T fMRI, MEG, and EEG. She is specifically interested in individual differences in brain functional networks and how these differences relate to individual characteristics in both health and disease.
Her recent work has centered on mapping the functional connectivity of the auditory cortex. In her K99/R00 project, she investigates whether tinnitus can be classified into subtypes based on brain network patterns. In addition, she is working on a project exploring the relationship between age-related hearing loss and Alzheimer’s disease using advanced functional network analyses.
Education
PhD in Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University, Finland
Select Publications
Hakonen, M., Dahmani, L., Blazejewska, A., Cui, W., Kotlarz, P., Lankinen, K., Li, M., Polimeni, J., Ren, J., Turpin, T., Wang, D., Liu, H., Ahveninen J. (2025). Individual connectivity-based parcellations reflect functional properties of human auditory cortex. Imaging Neuroscience.
Hakonen, M., May, P. J., Jääskeläinen, I. P., Jokinen, E., Sams, M. & Tiitinen, H. (2017). Predictive processing increases intelligibility of acoustically distorted speech: Behavioral and neural correlates. Brain and Behavior. 7.9.
Hakonen, M., Nurmi, T., Vallinoja, J., Jaatela, J., & Piitulainen, H. (2022). More comprehensive proprioceptive stimulation of the hand amplifies its cortical processing. Journal of neurophysiology, 128(3), 568-581.
Highlights
NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00)