Neuropsychology

Ying-Hui Chou

Assistant Professor, Psychology
Assistant Professor, Cognitive Science - GIDP
Assistant Professor, Evelyn F Mcknight Brain Institute
Member of the Graduate Faculty
Assistant Professor, BIO5 Institute
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(520) 621-7447

Research Interest

My research has focused primarily on the cognitive and clinical neuroscience of aging and neurodegenerative disorders. Within this framework, my laboratory is particularly interested in integrating brain imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) techniques to 1) develop image-guided therapeutic TMS protocols and 2) explore TMS-derived and image-based biomarkers for early diagnosis and prediction of therapeutic outcomes for individuals with mild cognitive impairment as well as Parkinson’s disease. For past few years, I have been involved in a number of NIA-funded studies investigating brain function and its relation to cognitive performance. I am currently the Director of Brain Imaging and TMS Laboratory and teach undergraduate and graduate level courses in cognitive neuroscience, brain rehabilitation, and brain connectivity at the University of Arizona.

Jonathan Lifshitz

Professor, Child Health - (Research Scholar Track)
Associate Professor, Clinical Translational Sciences
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(602) 827-2346

Work Summary

Jonathan Lifshitz's research questions primarily investigate traumatic brain injury as a disease process that dismantles, repairs and regenerates circuits in the brain. The underlying principle is that adaptive repair and regeneration fail, leaving a miswired brain and neurological impairments that decrease quality of life.

Research Interest

Dr. Lifshitz is the Director of the Translational Neurotrauma Research Program through the College of Medicine - Phoenix, which brings together clinicians and scientists as faculty to address the pathophysiology and recovery from animal models of acquired neurological injury (e.g. stroke, hemorrhage, concussion). These studies are guided by gaps in clinical knowledge to empower healthcare providers to improve quality of life for survivors. To this end, they use public databases, biorepositories, and animal models to address questions across the lifespan. Specific strengths include inflammation, rehabilitation, puberty, sleep, and neuronal morphology.

Matthew Dennis Grilli

Assistant Professor, Psychology
Assistant Professor, Evelyn F Mcknight Brain Institute
Assistant Professor, Neurology
Assistant Professor, Cognitive Science - GIDP
Assistant Professor, BIO5 Institute
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(520) 621-7447

Work Summary

My research interests are broadly focused on understanding how and why we store and retrieve memories. The clinical and cognitive neuroscience research conducted in my laboratory combines neuropsychological, cognitive, social psychological, and neuroimaging approaches. An emphasis of my current research is autobiographical memory, which refers to memories of personal experiences. Ongoing projects are investigating how autobiographical memory is affected in several populations, including older adults at risk for Alzheimer’s disease and individuals with acquired brain injury. We also are interested in understanding how changes to autobiographical memory impact other aspects of cognition, and we seek to develop new interventions to improve autobiographical memory and everyday functioning.

Research Interest

My research interests are broadly focused on understanding the reciprocal relations of self and memory. How does the self influence learning and memory retrieval? How does memory contribute to one's sense of self? Uncovering the ways in which the self and memory interact may advance understanding of identity, elucidate the conditions and experiences that modify the self, and inspire clinical interventions that improve quality of life and wellbeing for people who have neurological or mental health conditions. Ongoing projects are investigating how to improve memory through self-referential encoding strategies in individuals with traumatic brain injury and other neuropsychological conditions. My current research also is investigating how individuals with amnesia (a profound learning and memory impairment) construct a sense of self and experience a sense of continuity in life.

Katalin M Gothard

Professor, Physiology
Assistant Professor, Evelyn F Mcknight Brain Institute
Assistant Professor, Neurobiology
Associate Professor, Neurology
Associate Professor, Physiological Sciences - GIDP
Member of the Graduate Faculty
Assistant Professor, BIO5 Institute
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(520) 626-1448

Work Summary

The broad goal of Katalin Gothard's research is to understand the neural basis of emotion and social behavior. Her lab work reveals the real-time dynamic interactions in multiple systems implicated in emotion regulation and the mechanisms by which emotional responses produce immediate behavioral effects.

Research Interest

The broad goal of my research is to understand the neural basis of emotion and social behavior in non-human primates. Our laboratory pioneered multichannel neural recordings from the amygdala of monkeys engaged in naturalistic social interactions. Neural activity was monitored simultaneously with cardiovascular and other autonomic parameters of emotion to capture unique, coordinated brain-body states. These states, and the transitions between them, are the neural underpinnings of our emotional experiences and the memory thereof. I bring to BIO5 expertise from a broad and diverse range of sources. I earned a medical in Romania in 1988, followed by postgraduate training in neurosurgery, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience in 1996 at the University of Arizona. As a student, I explored the neural dynamics of spatial learning and memory in rats and determine the interaction of multiple spatial reference frames during navigation. I completed by postdoctoral studies at the UC Davis in primate socio-emotional behavior and the neurophysiological basis of communication with facial expressions. While at Davis, I received a K01 career development award that allowed me to assemble the largest existent annotated video library of macaque social behavior. I used this library to probe the behavioral and neural events that are the basic building blocks of social behavior (e.g., eye contact, the reciprocation of facial expressions, and gaze following). We discovered a specialized class of cell in the monkey brain that are active exclusively in the context of natural social behaviors and respond selectively to eye contact. We have developed techniques of precisely targeted bilateral microinjections in the primate brain and implemented successfully neural recording and parallel with microinjections of drugs and hormones. Currently we are testing the effect of various drugs in the activity of eye cells in the amygdala.

Lisa K Elfring

Associate Vice Provost, Office of Instruction/Assessment
Associate Specialist, Biology Education
Associate Professor, BIO5 Institute
Primary Department
Contact
(520) 621-1671

Work Summary

There are over 30,000 undergraduates on our campus, and the skills and knowledge they gain here will shape their future careers and their lives. My work focuses on helping faculty members to reach their potential as teachers, and working to support them in the critical work they do.

Research Interest

Lisa Elfring is an Associate Specialist in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and currently serves as Associate Vice Provost for Instruction and Assessment. In this administrative role, she leads the Office of Instruction and Assessment (OIA), which supports teaching and learning across campus. The office supports technology-enabled teaching (D2L, Panopto, Adobe Connect, VoiceThread); provides professional development and courses on evidence-based teaching for all UA instructors; produces media products (web pages, videos) that support instructors in their teaching; helps departments to carry out assessment of learning outcomes; and helps to connect instructors across departmental and college boundaries. Dr. Elfring is currently involved in two teaching-related research projects. In one, she and her collaborators are investigating a model to train instructors in large, collaborative STEM classes to utilize a team of graduate and undergraduates to improve student learning. In the other, the team is investigating the effects on students on creating and improving models in biological systems, in the context of an Introductory Biology lab course. Both projects are funded by awards from the National Science Foundation. Dr. Elfring's teaching experiences range from large courses in introductory cell/molecular biology and cell biology, to courses focusing on helping undergraduate students to prepare for doing laboratory research. Her research interests are integrated with her teaching role. She is interested in process of systemic change in educational systems, and particularly in how the university can promote the adoption, use, and assessment of research-based teaching strategies across the entire range of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) courses. In biology education, she has been involved in research on how students come to make sense of the key biological concept that genes code for RNAs which (mostly) encode proteins to form the structural and catalytic molecules of the cell, a process that is termed the central dogma of molecular biology. She and her collaborators were involved in efforts to introduce more quantitative problem-solving work in the Introductory Biology course and across the undergraduate life-sciences curriculum. Her undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral training is in molecular, cell, and developmental biology; she has done research using humans, mice, and fruit flies as experimental systems to investigate embryonic development and cancer. Keywords: Biology education, Faculty professional development

Haijiang Cai

Associate Professor, Neuroscience
Associate Professor, Translational Neuroscience
Associate Professor, Neuroscience - GIDP (
Associate Professor, BIO5 Institute
Member of the General Faculty
Member of the Graduate Faculty
Primary Department
Department Affiliations

Work Summary

Dr. Haijiang Cai's lab studies neural circuitry mechanism of behaviors in health and disease, and develop research tools as well as disease therapies. Recently, the lab has identified specific neural circuits in a brain region called amygdala that play important roles in both emotion and feeding behavior, which could be targeted to treat eating disorders or depression.

Research Interest

Feeding and anxiety are two conserved behaviors critical to survival and health in all mammals. These two behaviors are interacting with each other in health and disease. Patients with abnormal feeding behaviors during eating disorders or obesity are usually associated with anxiety and depression. These two behaviors are controlled by distinct neural circuits distributed across multiple brain regions. However, whether the neural circuits underlying these two behaviors have overlap or interactions is still unknown. The lab of Dr. Haijiang Cai studies the neural circuits of animal behaviors, with a focus on understanding how the neural circuits regulate feeding and emotional behaviors. The recent work from his lab identified a specific population of neurons in the amygdala, a brain region well known for emotion control, also plays important roles in appetite control. His lab is using state-of-the-art optogenetics, chemogenetics, electrophysiology and in vivo microendoscope calcium imaging to dissect the neural circuits. This research will help understand how feeding and anxiety interact with each other, and provide new insight in developing drugs to treat eating and emotional disorders with fewer side effect. Keywords: Neural circuits, Behavior, Feeding, Anxiety

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.

John JB Allen

Professor, Psychology
Distinguished Professor
Professor, BIO5 Institute
Member of the General Faculty
Professor, Neuroscience - GIDP
Member of the General Faculty
Member of the Graduate Faculty
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(520) 621-7448

Work Summary

Depression is a major health problem that is often chronic or recurrent. Existing treatments have limited effectiveness, and are provided wihtout a clear indication that they will match a particular patient's needs. In this era of precision medicine, we strive to develop neurally-informed treatments for depression and related disorders.

Research Interest

Dr. Allen’s research spans several areas, but the main focus is the etiology and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. His work focuses on identifying risk factors for depression using electroencephalographic and autonomic psychophysiological measures, especially EEG asymmetry, resting state fMRI connectivity, and cardiac vagal control. Based on these findings, he is developing novel and neurally-informed treatments for mood and anxiety disorders, including Transcranial Ultrasound, EEG biofeedback, and Transcranial Direct Current and Transcranial Alternating Current stimulation. Other work includes understanding how emotion and emotional disorders influence the way we make decisions and monitor our actions. Keywords: Depression, Neuromodulation, EEG, Resting-state fMRI

Gene E Alexander

Professor, Psychology
Professor, Psychiatry
Professor, Evelyn F Mcknight Brain Institute
Professor, Neuroscience - GIDP
Professor, Physiological Sciences - GIDP
Professor, BIO5 Institute
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(520) 626-1704

Work Summary

My research focuses on advancing our understanding of how and why aging impacts the brain and associated cognitive abilities. I use neuroimaging scans of brain function and structure together with measures of cognition and health status to identify those factors that influence brain aging and the risk for Alzheimer's disease. My work also includes identifying how health and lifestyle interventions can help to delay or prevent the effects of brain aging and Alzheimer's disease.

Research Interest

Dr. Alexander is Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, and the Neuroscience and Physiological Sciences Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs of the University of Arizona. He is Director of the Brain Imaging, Behavior and Aging Lab, a member of the Internal Scientific Advisory Committee for the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Arizona Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute. He received his post-doctoral training in neuroimaging and neuropsychology at Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Prior to coming to Arizona, Dr. Alexander was Chief of the Neuropsychology Unit in the Laboratory of Neurosciences in the Intramural Research Program at the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Alexander has over 20 years experience as a neuroimaging and neuropsychology researcher in the study of aging and age-related neurodegenerative disease. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the American Psychological Association (Division 40) Society for Clinical Neuropsychology. His research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Research Foundation, the State of Arizona, and the Alzheimer’s Association. He uses structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) combined with measures of cognition and behavior to investigate the effects of multiple health and lifestyle factors on the brain changes associated with aging and the risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Keywords: "Aging/Age-Related Disease", "Brain Imaging", "Cognitive Neurosicence", "Alzheimer's Disease"