Season Kickoff (Topic: Advanced Imaging Research)
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TALK TITLE COMING SOON: Don't miss the opening talk for the fall 2026 season of Frontiers of BrainHealth, our popular neuroscience lecture series, featuring Binu Thomas, PhD, of UT Southwestern Medical Center, whose current research seeks to understand brain vascular function, metabolism and physiology in aging, mild cognitive impairment, hypertension, obesity and its comorbidities as it relates to dementia risk through advanced imaging research.
Of Birds and Brain: Computerized Cognitive Training and Brain Plasticity for Alzheimer's Prevention
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UT Dallas researcher Chandramallika Basak, PhD, director of the Lifespan Neuroscience and Cognition (LiNC) Lab at the Center for Vital Longevity, shares insights into leading-edge controlled randomized trials (CRTs) conducted by her lab, focused on improving cognition in older adults. These studies identify moderators and mediators of cognitive training in both healthy aging and pre-clinical Alzheimer's disease (AD), as well as the game features of efficacious videogame training – insights that can guide design of best cognitive training for healthy aging and preclinical AD/early AD.
Mind-Body Interventions for Cognitive and Brain Health
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Dr. Ruchika Prakash is a distinguished professor of psychology at The Ohio State University, where she also serves as director of the Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging. Mind-body interventions encompass a growing range of non-pharmacological approaches that are increasingly being used to support cognitive and brain health in older adults. Capitalizing on the reciprocal relationship between psychological and physiological processes, these interventions are designed to improve physical functioning through changes in in mental health and well-being, and vice versa. Mindfulness-based interventions represent one class of mind-body interventions and have been demonstrated to reduce stress, improve attentional control, and enhance overall quality of life. In this talk, Dr. Prakash will review evidence from Stage I and Stage II randomized controlled trials showcasing the effects of these interventions for reducing mind-wandering, improving attentional control and everyday cognition, and decreasing levels of tau pathology in preclinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
Brain Injury and Risk of Dementia
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Millions of people experience concussions and other forms of brain injury each year and the impact on cognitive health can last a lifetime. UTSW Medical Center research leader Munro Cullum, PhD, shares emerging research on the connections between concussion, repetitive head trauma and the risk of developing dementia later in life, exploring diagnosis, prognosis, and long-term outcomes following brain injury, including concussion, repetitive head hits, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
AI and the Copernican Revolution in Intelligence
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If intelligence can increasingly be modeled, measured, and replicated, what remains distinctive about human beings? SMU Perkins School of Theology professor Robert Hunt, PhD, argues that the age of AI represents a “Copernican revolution” in our understanding of intelligence. Just as Copernicus removed humanity from the physical center of the universe, AI is removing humans from the intellectual center of the world they inhabit.
Brainspan: How The BrainHealth Project Can Inform Dementia Prevention
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Dementia is one of the main culprits undermining what should be our most rewarding years. Most current dementia-prevention trials are labor-intensive and hence expensive and difficult to scale to the hundreds of millions who need it. Internationally recognized cognitive neuroscientist Ian Robertson, PhD, shares an inside look at The BrainHealth Project, and how the longitudinal study is measuring and targeting improvements in the brain health of 100,000 people over ten years using a telehealth, web-based interface and real-time remote coaching.
Modeling Maternal Adversity in Rodents to Study Intergenerational Effects
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Millie Rincón-Cortés, PhD, leads the Developmental and Maternal Neurobiology Lab at UT Dallas, a developmental behavioral neuroscience lab that studies how exposure to adversity compromises behavioral and brain function throughout the lifespan. Her research reveals how maternal adversity in rats (modelled through resource scarcity) disrupts the brain's reward circuitry, causing reduced maternal motivation and diminished responsiveness to pups. These behavioral changes correspond with disruptions in the brain's reward circuitry (also known as the mesolimbic dopamine system). Her team has further demonstrated that early life adversity affects reward-related behaviors during adolescence.
How Blood Can Now Tell Us About Brain Health: Integration and Implementation of Blood Biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease
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Dr. Melissa Petersen's is assistant professor of Family Medicine and Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine at the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine. Her research focuses on the utility of blood-based biomarkers in the detection of neurodegenerative disease states including Alzheimer's disease among different racial and ethnic groups. Her collaboration and work with the Health and Aging Brain Study- Health Disparities (HABS-HD) cohort allows access to a biologically well characterized sample of Non-Hispanic Whites, Black, and Hispanics ranging from age 30 and above with available MRI, PET (Amyloid, Tau), blood-based biomarkers and cognitive data.
Topic: Neuropsychology and Brain Health
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TALK TITLE COMING SOON: Vonetta Dotson, PhD is a neuropsychologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Her research focuses on positive and negative modifiers of brain health, including the intersection of depression with cognitive and brain aging, and the impact of health disparities on brain health. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Alzheimer’s Association, and private foundations.
Immersive Intelligence: Using Virtual Reality, Digital Twins, and AI to Understand and Enhance Human Performance
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Jeff Price, MFA, directs the Virtual, Augmented, and Simulation Technology (VAST) Lab at UT Dallas, where he researches the impact of immersive technologies on the study, training and understanding of human behavior. This talk explores how virtual reality, augmented reality, digital twins, spatial computing and artificial intelligence can be combined to create controlled yet highly realistic environments for studying cognition, behavior, decision-making and human performance.
Understanding Risk, Improving Health: Leveraging Technology to Understand and Reduce Health-Risk Behaviors Across Adolescence and Young Adulthood
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Adolescence and young adulthood are critical developmental periods during which health-risk behaviors can emerge and become established, with important implications for long-term health and well-being. UT Arlington professors Melissa A. Lewis, PhD, and Dana M. Litt, PhD, discuss advances in digital technology that are transforming how researchers identify the cognitive, social and contextual mechanisms underlying these behaviors and how interventions are developed and delivered to reduce risk.