Jenna Adams


Postdoctoral Fellow
Office: 1415 Biological Sciences III
Email: jnadams@uci.edu

Jenna Adams

About Me
Projects
Research Interests
Publications
Honors and Awards
Fun!
I received my bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UC Santa Barbara in 2009, where I first gained an interest in memory research and neuroimaging while I was an undergraduate research assistant. After graduating, I spent two years as a clinical research coordinator at the Stanford School of Medicine to gain more research experience. I contributed to clinical neuroscience research investigating white matter structural integrity with diffusion-weighted imaging and cognitive deficits in children born prematurely. I then attended UC Berkeley’s Neuroscience Ph.D. program and joined the lab of Dr. William Jagust in 2015. My dissertation research focused on the implications of tau pathology on neural activity during memory processing and functional connectivity in aging and preclinical Alzheimer’s disease (AD), using positron emission tomography (PET) and functional MRI. I received my PhD in December 2020, and joined the Yassa Lab as a postdoctoral fellow in January 2021 to continue to study tau deposition in preclinical AD. My postdoctoral research will investigate how tau pathology affects subregional hippocampal function during memory and leads to behavioral impairments in preclinical AD.
  • Memory, Aging & Alzheimer’s disease
  • Information Processing in the Hippocampus
I am broadly interested in how episodic memory becomes impaired due to tau pathology in aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Tau deposition is commonly observed in the medial temporal lobe in normal aging and preclinical Alzheimer’s disease (AD), regions that are essential to memory processing. My postdoctoral research will focus on how tau within the hippocampus leads to dysfunctional hippocampal activation during memory processing, and the subsequent expression of memory impairment. I plan to use a multimodal neuroimaging design to use positron emission tomography (PET) to measure tau and amyloid-beta pathology, and functional MRI to measure activation while participants perform a memory task. I am also interested in investigating how functional connectivity between hippocampal subfields, the entorhinal cortex, and other cortical regions is disrupted by local tau pathology during both rest and memory processing.

Selected Publications: 

Chen, X, Cassady, KE, Adams, JN, Harrison, TM, Baker, SL, Jagust, WJ (2021). Regional tau effects on prospective cognitive change in cognitively normal older adults. The Journal of Neuroscience, 41(2) 366-375. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2111-20.2020

Adams, JN, Maass, A, Harrison, TM, Baker, SL, Jagust, WJ (2019). Cortical tau deposition follows patterns of entorhinal functional connectivity in aging. eLife, 8:e49132. doi:10.7554/eLife.49132

Harrison, TM, Maass, A, Adams, JN, Du, R, Baker, SL, Jagust, WJ (2019). Tau deposition is associated with functional isolation of the hippocampus in aging. Nature Communications, 10, 4900. doi:10.1038/s41467-019- 12921-z

Maass, A, Berron, D, Harrison, TM, Adams, JN, La Joie, R, Baker, S, Mellinger, T, Bell, RK, Swinnerton, K, Inglis, B, Rabinovici, GD, Duzel, E, Jagust, WJ (2019). Alzheimer’s pathology targets distinct memory networks in the ageing brain. Brain, 142, 2492-2509. doi:10.1093/brain/awz154

Li, L, Kang, J, Lockhart, SN, Adams, JN, Jagust, WJ (2018). Spatially adaptive varying correlation analysis for multimodal neuroimaging data. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 8(1), 113-123. doi:10.1109/TMI.2018.2857221

Adams, JN, Lockhart, SN, Li, L, Jagust, WJ (2019). Relationships between tau and glucose metabolism reflect Alzheimer’s disease pathology in cognitively normal older adults. Cerebral Cortex, 29(5), 1997-2009. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhy078

Johnson, EL, Adams, JN, Solbakk, AK, Endestad, T, Larsson, PG, Ivanovic, J, Meling TR, Lin, JJ, Knight, RT (2018). Dynamic frontotemporal systems process space and time in working memory. PLoS Biology, 16(3): e2004274. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2004274

 

Under Review/In Preparation

Adams, JN, Maass, A, Berron, D, Harrison, TM, Baker, SL, Thomas, WP, Stanfill, M, Jagust, WJ. Reduced repetition suppression in aging is driven by tau-related hyperactivity (revision under review)

Cassady, KE, Adams, JN, Chen, X, Maass, A, Harrison, TM, Landau, S, Baker, SL, Jagust, WJ. Alzheimer’s pathology is associated with dedifferentiation of functional memory networks in aging (revision under review). Preprint: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.14.340075

Ziontz, J, Adams, JN, Harrison, TM, La Joie, R, Baker, SL, Jagust, WJ. Hippocampal connectivity with retrosplenial cortex drives neocortical tau accumulation and memory function (under review). Preprint: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-235539/v1

Tennant, V, Adams, JN, La Joie, R, Harrison, TM, Winer, JR, Jagust, WJ. Tau deposition in fusiform cortex is associated with failure of proper name retrieval in aging (under review)

Adams, JN, Harrison, TM, Maass, A, Baker, SL, Jagust, WJ. Longitudinal tau accumulation in cognitively normal older adults is associated with baseline age, pathology, and activation (in preparation)

  • Young Investigator Travel Scholarship for Human Amyloid Imaging Conference (January 2020)
  • Predoctoral National Research Service Award, NIH F31 AG062090 (September 2019 – December 2020)
  • Travel Fellowship for Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (July 2019)
  • Honorable Mention, Alzheimer’s Association Young Investigator Award (Sept. 2018)
  • Honorable Mention, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (2016; 2017)
  • Predoctoral appointment to Neuroscience Training Program at UC Berkeley, NIH T32 NS095939 (2016-17)
  • Predoctoral appointment to Neuroscience Training Program at UC Berkeley, NIH T32 GM007048 (2015-16)
  • Western Section American Federation for Medical Research Scholar Award (Jan. 2014)
  • Graduated with Highest Honors, summa cum laude, UC Santa Barbara (June 2013)
  • Distinction in the Major, UC Santa Barbara (June 2013)
  • Exceptional Academic Performance in Psychology, UC Santa Barbara (June 2013)
  • Academic Excellence Award, UC Santa Barbara (June 2013)
  • Dean’s Honors, UC Santa Barbara (2009-2013)
Outside of the lab, I spend most of my time with my fiancé, Matt, and my family and friends. I enjoy nature photography, vinyasa yoga, growing succulents, reading novels, and cooking and wine tasting. I also love traveling, whether it’s local weekend getaways to explore California, or longer international trips to experience new cultures and sights. I try to soak up as much sunshine as possible and am often hiking, spending time at parks and lakes, or relaxing at the beach.

What the lab means to me…

“As a new member of the Yassa lab, everyone has been so welcoming and helpful – I can really feel the sense of community! I am excited to begin working with everyone and getting to know the lab better (especially post-covid!).“