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News, Announcements, and Events

Upcoming Events and Recent News

Congratulations to Adam Turnbull, PhD 

on being awarded a K01 grant from NIH.

Adam's K01, titled Evaluating the Feasibility of Burst Measures of Biopsychological Mismatch within Cognitive Training Sessions in MCI Across Diverse Racial and Ethnic Groups, aims to improve transfer effects from cognitive training protocols in older adults. Adam is a former NEW Brain Aging pilot funding awardee.

Awardees Announced for the NEW Brain Aging 2024 Travel Fellowship Program

Congratulations to:
 

  • Kelly Cotton, PhD : Albert Einstein College of Medicine

  • Michael Kleberman, PhD : University of Colorado, Boulder

  • Mingtong Liu, PhD : University of Wisconsin, Madison

  • Darina Petrovsky PhD, RN : Duke University

  • Sa Zhou, PhD : Stanford University

This award aims to promote scientific relationships between early-career scientists and investigators who are established in their careers and the field. We hope that this fellowship will help awardees become more familiar with the areas of emotional wellbeing (EWB) and brain aging and cross-species driven research methods, generate and refine their own proposals for the study of EWB and aging, and develop a network of colleagues with complementary interests.

Awardees will meet with established career mentors regularly throughout the AAIC 2024 meeting (https://aaic.alz.org/), including a 1-day preconference workshop to be held on July 27th, 2024. They also will be invited to attend periodic NEW Brain Aging scientific meetings virtually before and after AAIC 2024 for additional mentoring support and networking opportunities.

Publication: Positive affective experience protects cognitive plasticity in older adults with neurodegeneration

First Author Mia Anthony is a NEW Brain Aging supplemental funding awardee

Anthony, M., Turnbull, A., Tadin, D., Lin, F. Positive affective experience protects cognitive plasticity in older adults with neurodegeneration, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

Postdoctoral NRSA position available for the study of EWB in the UR Center for the Study and Prevention of Suicide.

Position must be filled by July 2024

News and Event Archive

2023 Travel Fellowship SFN Pre-conference Workshop

November 10, 2023

The pre-conference workshop was held on November 10th, 2023 at Hyatt Place Washington DC/ Whitehouse, 1522 K St NW, Washington, DC. Please click SCHEDULE to see details for the pre-conference workshop, fellowship group event, and recommended lectures. 

Presentation by Dr. Zoe Donaldson: Real time dopamine dynamics underlying pair bonding and loss

Available to watch on our webinars page:

Dr. Zoe Donaldson is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies how close social bonds, such as those that mediate friendships and romantic love, are encoded in the brain. To understand the cells and molecules that make bonding possible and identify their involvement in grieving and loss, her lab uses monogamous prairie voles. Unlike rats and mice, these rodents form lifelong pair bonds between mates akin to human romantic partnerships. Her research hopes to identify novel treatments for psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. She has been highlighted in the Economist and the Washington Post. 

Publication: New Horizons in Emotional Well-being and Brain Aging: Potential Lessons from Cross-species Research

Publication by Center Directors Yeates Conwell, Vankee Lin, and Kuan Hong Wang

Lin, F., Zuo, Y., Conwell, Y., Wang, K. New Horizons in Emotional Well-being and Brain Aging: Potential Lessons from Cross-species Research. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry (2023)

2023 Pilot Project Awardees Announced!

More info below:

Congradulations to Dr. Ehsan Adeli of Stanford University and Dr. Zoe Donaldson of UC Boulder for recieving pilot funding for their projects. 

Publication: Influence of Affective States on Informant Impression of Neuropsychiatric Symptoms in people living with MCI

First author Sarah Therrien is Administrative Assistant of NEW Brain Aging

Sarah Therrien*†, Adam Turnbull*†, Mia Anthony*, Yeates Conwell, Feng Vankee Lin. Influence of Affective States on Informant Impression of Neuropsychiatric Symptoms in people living with MCI. Aging & Mental Health (2023).

Publication: Can Emotional Well-Being Maintain Health and Prevent Suicide in Later Life? A National Priority for Research

Publication by Center Directors Yeates Conwell, Vankee Lin, and Kuan Hong Wang

Conwell Y., Lin FV., Wang, K. Can Emotional Well-Being Maintain Health and Prevent Suicide in Later Life? A National Priority for Research. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry (2023) 

Publication: CCA identifies a neurophysiological marker of adaptation capacity that is reliably linked to internal locus of control of cognition in amnestic MCI

First author Lizbeth Peralta-Malvaez is a Travel Fellow of NEW Brain Aging

Peralta-Malváez, L.*†, Turnbull, A. *†, Anthony, M*. Adeli, E., Lin FV. CCA identifies a neurophysiological marker of adaptation capacity that is reliably linked to internal locus of control of cognition in amnestic MCI, GeroScience (2023)

Presentation by Dr. Stacey Shaefer: Investigations of emotion, aging, and the brain in the longitudinal MIDUS Affective Neuroscience Project to better understand the role of emotions in wellbeing and brain health throughout adulthood.

February 3, 2023

Available to watch on our webinars page:

Stacey M. Schaefer is a cognitive-affective neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Institute on Aging. Dr. Schaefer is P.I. of the longitudinal Midlife in the United States National Study of Health and Wellbeing (MIDUS) Affective Neuroscience Project. She received her B.S. in Psychology and Zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ph.D. in Psychology with a specialization in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on identifying the linkages between individual differences in affective chronometry measures of emotional responses, health, wellbeing, and brain aging, as well as the sociodemographic, psychosocial, and lifestyle factors that moderate those relationships. Dr. Schaefer is also P.I. of a study in collaboration with the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer Prevention examining how emotional processes may differ in preclinical Alzheimer's Disease, how these emotional differences relate to memory and cognition changes, as well as to tau and amyloid levels.  Finally, Dr. Schaefer is co-PI (with Dr. Richard J. Davidson) of a large R01 study examining how individual differences in the time course of emotional responses (measured with neuroimaging, psychophysiology, and ecological momentary assessment) are important for mental health, stress regulation, the immune system, cognition, and coping with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Congratulations to Mia Anthony!

Mia is a member of the CogT Lab at UR/Stanford

Congratulations to Mia Anthony, a senior PhD student at University of Rochester, on receiving a two-year NIH fellowship to examine positive affective experience as a mechanism for explaining how some older adults with neurodegeneration maintain intact cognitive function. 

Publication: Ontologies in the Behavioral Sciences: Accelerating Research and the Spread of Knowledge

Author Bob Kaplan is an External Advisory Board member of NEW Brain Aging

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences; Committee on Accelerating Behavioral Science through Ontology Development and Use. Ontologies in the Behavioral Sciences: Accelerating Research and the Spread of Knowledge. Beatty AS, Kaplan RM, editors. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2022 May 17. PMID: 35593779.

Presentation by Dr. Dacher Keltner:  The Age of Emotion Science: Insights from Computational Approaches and a Case Study of Awe

October 5, 2022

Available to watch on our webinars page:

Dacher Keltner (dacherkeltner.com) is a Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center (greatergood.berkeley.edu). Dacher’s research focuses on the biological and cultural evolution of compassion, awe, love, beauty, and humility, as well as power, social class, and inequality (dacherkeltner.com). Dacher is the author of many scientific articles and several books, including Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence, and AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622175/awe-by-dacher-keltner/). Dacher has won many research, teaching, and service awards, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has consulted for Apple, Pinterest, Google, the Sierra Club, and was a scientific consultant for Pixar’s Inside Out and Soul and for the Center for Constitutional Rights in its work to outlaw solitary confinement.

Presentation by Dr. Yi Zuo: Stress effects on cortical circuits; impact, prevention, and rescue

May 4, 2022

Available to watch on our webinars page:

Dr. Yi Zuo received B.S. in Biology from Tsinghua University in China, and Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Northwestern University in the United States. She received postdoctoral training at New York University and the University of Texas at Austin, before joining the faculty of the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology at University of California Santa Cruz in 2007. Dr. Zuo received the Committee on Women in Neuroscience Career Development Award in 2006 and was a Sloan Fellow (2007), an Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar (2007), and a finalist for the Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists (2015). She has been teaching the Neurobiology summer course at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA since 2006, and directing the Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques winter course at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience since 2016. Dr. Zuo’s lab studies how experiences affect mammalian neural circuits through synaptic modifications, and investigates its implications for neurological and psychiatric disorders, using in vivo structural and functional imaging, mouse genetics, and mouse behavioral analysis. 

2022 Pilot Project Awardees Announced!

Find more information on 2022 pilots by clicking below:

We are please to announce this year's Pilot Award Program awardees are Adam Turnbull, PhD of the University of Rochester and Ju Lu, PhD of UC Santa Cruz. 

Presentation by Dr. Sarah Garfinkel: Clinical Neuroscience and the Heart Brain Axis

February 2, 2022

Available to watch on our webinars page:

Sarah Garfinkel is Professor at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, where she leads the Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Group. She completed her PhD in Experimental Psychology the University of Sussex, before undergoing a fellowship in Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan. Her current work focuses on brain-body interactions underlying emotion and cognition, with a particular focus on the heart. Adopting a translational perspective, she investigates altered cardiac-neural mechanisms in different clinical conditions. In September 2018, Sarah was named by the journal Nature as one of 11 "Rising Star" researchers, across all STEM disciplines internationally. Sarah is also involved in the public engagement of science where she contributes to science programmes on BBC TV and radio.

Neuroimaging and Brain Aging Workshop

December 15, 2021


Available to watch on our webinars page:

The objective of this workshop is to introduce the principles and applications of neuroimaging techniques for the study of brain aging. This workshop is aimed towards students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty who are new to the field and who are interested in an orientation on neuroimaging and brain aging research. Presentations in this workshop are given by leaders in the fields of animal, human, and cross-species brain imaging.

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