Archives for May 2016

Undergraduate 3rd year Matt Tsai was recently awarded the Brian Atwood Scholarship in the Ayala School of Biological Sciences at UCI. This scholarship is awarded to junior-level Biological Sciences majors who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in both scholarship and service to the UCI community.

Matt’s interested in mental health have fueled his current research in the lab which explores mental health in college undergraduates. He is a true asset to our group and to UCI.

Congratulations, Matt!

Stephanie Leal recently defended her dissertation, completing her graduate studies and earning her doctorate degree. Dr. Leal’s dissertation work, Emotional Modulation of Episodic Memory and Translational Application to Aging and Depression-Related Cognitive Impairment focuses on how emotion modulates our memory and how this modulation changes over the course of aging and depression. During her time in the lab, Stephanie has been an exemplary and meticulous graduate student and scientist, a devoted mentor and a caring friend.

Dr. Leal has accepted a position as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley with Dr. William Jagust where she will investigate the effect of tau and amyloid pathology on memory consolidation in cognitively normal aging.

We will miss Stephanie in Irvine but are excited to see her advance to the next chapter.

Congratulations, Dr. Leal!

 

If you are interested in finding out more about Stephanie’s research, below is a list of her publications.

• Leal, S.L., Yassa, M.A. (2013) Perturbations of Neural Circuitry in Aging, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer’s Disease. Ageing Research Reviews 12(3):823-831.
• Leal, S.L., Tighe, S.K., Yassa, M.A. (2014) Asymmetric effects of emotion on mnemonic interference. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 111: 41-48.
• Anderson, B.A., Leal, S.L., Hall, M.G., Yassa, M.A., Yantis, S. (2014) The attribution of value-based attentional priority in individuals with depressive symptoms. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience. I14(4), 1221-1227.
• Leal, S.L., Tighe, S.K., Jones, C.K., Yassa, M.A. (2014) Pattern separation of emotional information in  hippocampal dentate and CA3. Hippocampus, 24:41-48.
• Leal, S.L., Yassa, M.A. (2014) Effects of aging on mnemonic discrimination of emotional information Behavioral Neuroscience, 128(5), 539-547.
• Leal, S.L., Yassa, M.A. (2015). Chapter 2: The aging hippocampus: a cross-species examination. Preservation of Memory, Psychology Press (Taylor and Francis)
• Leal, S.L., Yassa, M.A. (2015) Neurocognitive Aging and the Hippocampus across Species Trends in Neurosciences 38(12):800-812.
• Reagh, Z.M., Ho, H.D., Leal, S.L., Noche, J.A., Chun, A., Murray, E.A., Yassa, M.A.(2015)  Greater loss of object than spatial mnemonic discrimination in aged adults. Hippocampus. 2015 DOI: 10.1002/hipo.22562.

Join Dr. Yassa as he discusses the aging brain and changes in memory systems, Alzheimer’s dementia, how to differentiate dementia in the early stages from healthy aging, what we know about prevention strategies that may reduce risk for dementia, latest data on supplementation and physical and cognitive exercise.

When: Tuesday May 10, 2016, 6:00PM
Where: Oasis Senior Center |801 Narcissus Avenue, Corona Del Mar CA

RSVP to this FREE event by calling (949) 644-3244 or email OASISCenter@newportbeachca.gov