New Index — Mood and Cognition in Aging

Faculty

Sara Weisenbach, PhD, ABPP

Dr. Weisenbach is the chief of Neuropsychology at McLean Hospital, a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist, and a clinical translational researcher. She is currently studying the mechanisms and deficits underlying depression during middle-age and late life in a developmental/longitudinal context and translating this knowledge into effective neuropsychological and neuroimaging tools to monitor course of illness and cognitive decline and conversion to dementia. She completed a Career Development Award through the VA Rehabilitation, Research, & Development Program that investigated reward, memory, and executive functioning brain networks in older adults with depression, and how patterns in these networks predict cognitive decline. Her R01 Award investigates how sex and depression severity moderate emotion regulation skills in middle-aged and older adults, and the role of executive functions on emotion regulation, using multi-modal measurement strategies. Dr. Weisenbach is also funded with a NARSAD Young Investigator Award through the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation for a project of epigenetic mechanisms of late life depression and cognitive decline. Dr. Weisenbach earned her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Colorado State University in 2005. She completed post-doctoral fellowships in Clinical and Research Neuropsychology and Advanced Geriatrics at University of Michigan and VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, respectively. She began her position at McLean in August 2022, following her positions as an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Health at Stony Brook University and previously as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Utah.

Regan Patrick, PhD

Dr. Patrick holds a clinical and research position within the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry and the Neuropsychology Department. His clinical work focuses on neuropsychological and psychodiagnostic assessment in adult and geriatric patients. His research uses cognitive and brain imaging techniques to better understand the causes and consequences of psychiatric and neurocognitive disorders.

Dr. Patrick received his PhD in psychology from McMaster University, where his research examining the cognitive and neural mechanisms of schizophrenia was funded by the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). He went on to complete an APA-accredited internship at the Medical University of South Carolina, with an emphasis in neuropsychological assessment and research. Dr. Patrick then completed a fellowship in adult and geriatric neuropsychology at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

Boyu Ren, PhD

Dr. Ren is a biostatistician in Mclean Hospital’s Laboratory for Psychiatry Biostatistics. He has developed Bayesian models for personalized characterization of longitudinal cognitive outcomes in older adults with mood disorders. He hopes that his work will produce novel insights on the evolution of cognitive function in older adults with mood disorders, helping to inform data-driven, personalized medical decision-making for this population.

Robert Welsh, PhD

Dr. Welsh is the current Technical Director of Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at UCLA and a Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the School of Medicine. His research interests are centered on advanced analytic and mathematical approaches to understanding brain structure and function in diseased states. He uses neuroimaging methodology such as diffusion imaging (DTI/HARDI), resting state connectivity, as well as activation paradigms to further his studies. Using these techniques, he has investigated diseases such as schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic brain disorder, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He currently is building analytic models for development of biomarkers based on multi-modal neuroimaging data. These models are being realized in various machine learning algorithms. In the past, while he was at the University of Michigan, he was involved in pre-surgical planning in collaborations with clinicians from radiation-oncology, neurosurgery, and neurology.

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Scott Langenecker, PhD

Dr. Langenecker is clinical neuropsychologist and is a Professor of Psychiatry and Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of Utah. His research and clinical work focus on the lifespan approach to mood and anxiety disorders, with a particular focus on life transitions (e.g., adolescence to adulthood). He is developing and adapting biological and cognitive tools to understand ways to identify and treat individuals with a past history of mood disorders to reduce recurrence, decrease episode length and severity, and to improve functioning and quality of life.

To learn more about Scott’s research, click the following link: Dr. Langenecker's MEND2 Lab

Vincent Koppelmans, PhD

Dr. Koppelmans, is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Utah. He earned a Master of Science degree in Clinical Neuropsychology from the VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and a Master of Science degree in Health Sciences from the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD in Neuro-epidemiology from the same Erasmus University for his dissertation on The Late Effects of Adjuvant Chemotherapy on Brain Function and Structure.

Dr. Koppelmans completed his postdoctoral training in Neural Control of Movement in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He was awarded a fellowship from the National Space Biomedical Research Institute to investigate exercise as a potential countermeasure for brain changes that occur as a result of long-duration bed rest. Following his postdoctoral training, he joined the Kinesiology Department of the University of Michigan as an Assistant Research Scientist. He is interested in disease and age related brain structural and functional neuroplasticity and their relation with cognitive function and motor behavior.

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Joseph Kim, PhD

Dr. Kim is a neuropsychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Utah School of Medicin. He earned his PhD in Clinical Psychology from Vanderbilt University in 2016. He completed a clinical neuropsychology internship at Duke University Medical Center (2015-2016), and subsequently held a postdoctoral fellow position at the University of Utah School of Medicine (2016-2018) before joining the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry as an Instructor, tenure-track. Dr. Kim’s primary research interests focus on elucidating the neurocognitive architecture of emotion regulation in older adults and identifying novel neurostimulation therapeutic treatment targets. He utilizes behavioral and psychophysiological indices of affective processing and regulation in conjunction with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). He also integrates neuroimaging techniques in his research, specifically structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He is planning to use multimodal approaches (using behavioral, psychophysiological, neuroimaging tools) to probe the underlying mechanism of the putative neurostimulation-dependent changes to the emotion regulation network in older adults. In his clinical work, he specializes in neuropsychological evaluation and behavioral treatment of adults with memory and thinking problems.

Nikhil Palekar, MD

Nikhil J. Palekar, MD, is a board-certified geriatric psychiatrist and Medical Director of the Stony Brook Center of Excellence for Alzheimer's Disease. He is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Stony Brook University School of Medicine. He is also the Division Director for Geriatric Psychiatry and Director of the Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship Program at Stony Brook University Hospital.

Dr. Palekar joined Stony Brook Medicine from New York – Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center where he was Chief of a specialized program for treatment resistant mood and psychotic disorders. An accomplished clinician, educator and scientist, Dr. Palekar is an expert in the treatment and research of cognitive and mood disorders in the geriatric population. He has been a co-investigator on several NIMH-funded clinical studies in adult and geriatric psychiatry and has presented his research at both national and international conferences. His current research focus is on using imaging modalities to study cognitive impairment and mood disorders in the elderly.

Dr. Palekar has been a gifted educator, mentor and supervisor to medical students, residents and geriatric psychiatry fellows. In 2016, Dr. Palekar was the recipient of the Planetree – Physician of the Year Award for excellence in patient-centered care.

Dr. Palekar received his medical degree from University of Pune, India. He completed his Psychiatry Residency and Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship at SUNY Downstate Medical Center where he served as Chief Resident. Following his training, Dr. Palekar joined the Weill Cornell Institute of Geriatric Psychiatry. He is a member of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry.

Study Coordinators

Jeremy Maciarz, MA

Jeremy completed his bachelor’s in applied psychology at SUNY Binghamton University where he was a researcher for Dr. Albrecht Inhoff’s lab in eye-tracking as well as an extern at the Institute for Child Development. He went on to complete his master’s in psychology at Stony Brook University while maintaining a research role in the Stony Brook Temperament Study working with EEG data and setup, as well as being an extern at the Stony Brook Medicine Neuropsychology Clinic administering tests and writing up clinical reports. Jeremy wishes to gain his Ph.D. in clinical neuropsychology to further pursue his ventures in neurobehavioral sleep research and practice.

Loreal Williams, BS

Loreal completed her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a concentration in Sociology at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City. While at home in Boston, Loreal was a volunteer research assistant at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Recovery Research Institute, where she focused on increasing the accessibility and diversity of substance use disorder research. More specifically, Loreal’s clinical interests range from the epidemiology of suicidality to culturally adapting evidence-based treatments for people of color. In the future, Loreal aspires to earn a PhD in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis on African American history and the various systemic disadvantages that effect Black mental health. In her spare time, Loreal can be found with her camera – either digital or film – usually taking photos of her friends, herself, or her beloved pets.

Other Collaborators

Megan Armstrong, MA

Megan recently graduated from Stony Brook University with her masters in psychology. During the master’s program she worked as a lab manager for the Stress, Emotions and Health lab, where she studied these factors in the context of aging. She was also trained in administering neuropsychological tests during her internship with Stony Brook’s Neuropsychology Service. For the past five years, she worked part time as a recreational therapist and receptionist at the Bristal Assisted Living, where she discovered her love for working with older adults. Megan hopes to go on for a Ph.D in clinical psychology and pursue a career in geriatric psychology in the future.

Jack Kaufman, MA

Jack earned his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Florida and held two research assistant positions during that time; one in the Center for Translation Research in Neurodegenerative Disease and the other in the Brain Rehabilitation Research Center’s Neural Control of Movement Lab at the V.A.. After graduating, Jack earned his Master’s degree from Tel Aviv University. He plans to pursue psychology at the doctoral level. When Jack is not in the lab, he can be found on a stand-up paddleboard listening to an audiobook, and if he’s not there, try the grocery store.