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Jessica M. Ross, PhD

Jessica M. Ross, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Education History:
Ph.D., Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced

Jessica’s research uses neurophysiological measures and brain stimulation to observe network contributions to typical and impaired cognition in aging adults. Her PhD dissertation focused on auditory-motor interactions, using a range of techniques including motion tracking, EEG and transcranial magnetic stimulation. A central theme across this work is that the brain uses prediction to engage with the world efficiently and effectively, and that movement control networks inform auditory prediction. She has worked with healthy young and typically aging populations, and patient populations, including with people with Parkinson’s disease and various forms of dementia.

At the Berenson-Allen Center she is testing the hypotheses of the Cognitive Reserve Model (Cizginer et al., 2017), which suggests that aberrant brain connectivity or plasticity can interfere with the brain’s compensatory abilities during periods of acute stress. One example of this can be seen in aging adults who develop delirium after surgery. This is part of a collaboration called the Successful Aging After Elective Surgery (SAGES) Study, for which Jessica is probing frontoparietal control and default mode network activity in these patients using TMS protocols and EEG resting state connectivity measures with the goal of determining predictors for risk of post-surgery delirium in this population.

Website:
http://www.jessicamarieross.com.

Personal Interests/Hobbies:
My free time is dedicated to exploring Boston and the surrounding areas, pet sitting, listening to audiobooks from the BPL and podcasts, and spending time with my husband and our three beautiful bully breed dogs. .