Research
I am a scientist with primary research interests in the overlapping areas of animal cognition, behavior, and neuroscience. I have worked with a range of species to address these interests, including fish, rodents, reptiles, and canines. My research thus far has exploited conserved mechanisms underlying cognition and behavior across species to provide both fundamental insights into cognition and to identify therapeutic targets that translate across species and age.
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Non-invasive neurostimulation is a potential therapeutic approach to Alzheimer’s disease, with the potential to rescue memory impairment in humans. In June 2023, I became a research scientist at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, where I was awarded a Career Development Award (CDA2) for 5 years of protected research. As a research scientist, I investigate how non-invasive audio-visual neurostimulation at specific frequencies (aka flicker) alters neuropathology, such as microglia's engulfment of amyloid plaques and microglia morphology, in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease. Because half a million United States Veterans have Alzheimer's disease, and that number is expected to grow, this research has the potential to identify a noninvasive treatment for Alzheimer's disease neuropathology.
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In 2019 I joined Dr. Annabelle Singer's lab as a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Singer has established and continues to develop a new therapeutic approach to Alzheimer’s disease, novel forms of non-invasive neurostimulation, and new ways to manipulate the brain’s immune system. This research was recently published in Science Advances in 2023.
As a graduate research fellow in the lab of Dr. Gregory Berns at Emory University, I examined the neural mechanisms underlying perception in pet dogs through noninvasive, unrestrained, unsedated functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).
As a graduate research fellow in the lab of Dr. Mark Galizio and Dr. Kate Bruce at University of North Carolina Wilmington, I examined behavioral models of concept formation in rodents using odor stimuli as well as behavioral and memory deficits following administration of drugs of abuse.
