Rate My Professor Alex Leff

Professor Alex Leff is Professor of Cognitive Neurology at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, where he also holds the position of Deputy Director for Education and Student Experience. An NIHR Research Professor, he is an Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, part of University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Leff leads the Neurotherapeutics research group and the Leff Lab, with a focus on cognitive rehabilitation for individuals affected by acquired brain injuries from stroke, head injury, or brain tumors, as well as degenerative conditions like dementia. His clinical work includes running a specialist multidisciplinary outpatient assessment clinic for patients with hemianopia and higher disorders of vision, and he played a key role in developing and funding the Queen Square intensive comprehensive aphasia programme through a charity-NHS partnership.

Leff's research interests encompass brain imaging studies of aphasia and alexia using fMRI and MEG to elucidate neural correlates of rehabilitation, alongside the design and testing of web-based therapies for cognitive, language, and visual impairments. Key projects include a longitudinal, randomized, double-blind trial combining cholinergic enhancement with behavioral therapy for Wernicke’s aphasia; the development and extension of Read-Right, a community-based web therapy improving text reading speed in hemianopic alexia (supported by The Stroke Association); and MEG investigations into behavioral rehabilitation for pure alexia. His major publications include “Spatial normalization of brain images with focal lesions using cost function masking” (NeuroImage, 2001), “Speech facilitation by left inferior frontal cortex stimulation” (Current Biology, 2011), “Biomarkers of stroke recovery: consensus-based core recommendations from the stroke recovery and rehabilitation roundtable” (International Journal of Stroke, 2017), and “Predicting language outcome and recovery after stroke: the PLORAS system” (Nature Reviews Neurology, 2010). These works have significantly influenced lesion-symptom mapping, prognostic modeling in stroke, and accessible neurorehabilitation strategies.