Carol A Barnes

Carol A Barnes

Professor, Psychology
Regents Professor
Director, Evelyn F Mcknight Brain Institute
Director, Neural Systems-Memory and Aging
Endowed Chair, Evelyn F Mcknight Brain Institute for Learning-Memory Aging
Professor, Translational Neuroscience
Professor, Cancer Biology - GIDP
Professor, Neuroscience - GIDP
Professor, Physiological Sciences - GIDP
Professor, BIO5 Institute
Member of the General Faculty
Member of the Graduate Faculty
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(520) 626-2616

Research Interest

Carol A. Barnes, PhD, is a Regents' Professor in the Department of Psychology, Neurology, Neuroscience and BIO5, Director of the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, Director of the ARL Division of Neural Systems, Memory & Aging, Associate Director of the BIO5 Institute, and the Evelyn F. McKnight Endowed Chair for Learning and Memory in Aging at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. Dr. Barnes is past-president of the 42,000 member Society for Neuroscience, an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an Elected Foreign Member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters. She earned her B.A. in psychology from the University of California at Riverside, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She did postdoctoral training in neuropsychology and neurophysiology in the Department of Psychology at Dalhousie University, The Institute of Neurophysiology, University of Oslo, and in the Cerebral Functions Group at University College London. The central goal of Dr. Barnes’ research program is to understand how the brain changes during the aging process and what the functional consequences of these changes are on information processing and memory in the elderly. Her research program involves behavioral, electrophysiological and molecular biological approaches to the study of young and aged rodents and non-human primates. This work provides a basis for understanding the basic mechanisms of normal aging in the brain and sets a background against which it is possible to assess the effects of pathological changes such as Alzheimer’s disease. Some current work also includes an assessment of therapeutic agents that may be promising in the alleviation or delay of neural and cognitive changes that occur with age. Dr. Barnes has written over 225 articles in the area of memory changes during normal aging and their possible neurobiological correlates.

Publications

Takehara-Nishiuchi, K., Insel, N., Hoang, L. T., Wagner, Z., Olson, K., Chawla, M. K., Burke, S. N., & Barnes, C. A. (2013). Activation patterns in superficial layers of neocortex change between experiences independent of behavior, environment, or the hippocampus. Cerebral Cortex, 23, 2225-2234.
Zelikowsky, M., Hersman, S., Chawla, M. K., Barnes, C. A., & Fanselow, M. S. (2014). Neuronal ensembles in amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex track differential components of contextual fear. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 34(25), 8462-6.
Han, P., Nielson, M., Song, M., Yin, J., Permenter, M. R., Vogt, J. A., Engle, J. R., Dugger, B. N., Beach, T. G., Barnes, C. A., & Shi, J. (2017). The impact of aging on brain pituitary adenylate cylse activating polypeptide, pathology and cognition in APP transgenic mice and nonhuman primates. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 9, 80. doi:10.3389/fnagi.2017.00180..
Lester, A. W., Moffat, S. D., Barnes, C. A., & Wolbers, T. (2017). The aging navigational system. Neuron, 9, 1019-1035.
Samson, R. D., Venkatesh, A., Patel, D. H., Lipa, P., & Barnes, C. A. (2014). Enhanced performance of aged rats in contingency degradation and instrumental extinction tasks. Behavioral neuroscience, 128(2), 122-33.