News
Please contact us by leaving a phone message Spring 2025:
Terrific job at the Massachusetts Neuropsychological Society’s annual science symposium last night, with posters presented by Seheni Kariyawasan (intrepid undergraduate!), Emma Little, Nick Picasso, and Meredith Rowe. See Our Research for some examples.
Congratulations to Rini Kaplan and Celina Pluim McDowell, who received their PhD hoods at BU’s graduation for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences! Their proud mentors, Yakeel Quiroz (Celina) and Alice Cronin-Golomb (Rini and Celina), shared in the joyous celebration.
Congratulations as well to newly-minted Masters of Arts, Emma Little and Nicholas Picanso, who excelled in our lab this year, and to new BU bachelor Seheni Kariyawasan, an outstanding undergraduate researcher!
New lab papers: A couple of educational ones- unusual for us but interesting to be part of. Along with former PhD student Gretchen Reynolds, we published a guide for frontline healthcare providers to learn and use principles of cognitive behavioral therapy to treat anxiety in Parkinson’s disease. Another paper was by the members of the International Parkinson’s and Movement Disorders Society’s Clinical Outcome Assessment Scientific Evaluation Committee, our report on recommended neuropsychological tests of memory, visuospatial, and language function in PD.
Regarding empirical papers, the two that were in press last time are now published (Fox-Fuller et al., Giudicsssi et al.; publication information updated below under spring/summer 2024). Additional new papers include a study of religious stress coping and entorhinal tau in AD, led by doctoral student Jairo Martinez (with coauthors including doctoral student Averi Giudicessi and research mentor Yakeel Quiroz); a study of changes in subjective cognition and social functioning in PD during the COVID era, led by doctoral student Nishaat Mukadam and including coauthor doctoral students Shraddha Kinger, Celina Pluim McDowell, and Rini Kaplan, plus former undergraduate Juliana Wall, former doctoral student Rob Salazar, and collaborator Sandy Neargarder; and a study led by Celina Pluim McDowell on risk factors for poor sleep quality and subjective cognitive decline in older adults during the COVID era, with coauthors including Jairo Martinez, Averi Giudicessi, and Yakeel Quiroz.
We also have 3 papers in press: (1) Relation of “openness” and verbal learning and memory in PD, led by former doctoral student Ollie Barthelemy, with coauthors being former undergraduates Alexandra Shirey and Stephanie Anakwe and collaborators Sandy Neargarder and Joe DeGutis; (2) Patterns of prefrontal cortex activity associated with dual-tasking using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, led by doctoral student Rini Kaplan, with coauthors including doctoral students Nishaat Mukadam and Courtney Guida, former undergraduate Alissa Sebastian, and collaborators Terry Ellis and Meryem Yücel; and (3), a study quantifying the impact of hair and skin characteristics on fNIRS signal quality, with recommendations for improvement to enhance inclusivity in fNIRS projects. This study was led by collaborator Meryem Yücel and included coauthors Rini Kaplan, Nishaat Mukadam, and Terry Ellis.
Bezdicek, O., Biundo, R., Boelema, S., Cammisuli, D. M., Cholerton, B., Cronin-Golomb, A., Dalrymple-Alford, J. C., Duits, A., Fellows, R., Gerstenecker, A., El Hachioui, H., Horáková, H., Koerts, J., Levin, B., Liepelt-Scarfone, I., Sarno, M., Mestre, T. A., Ferro, Á. S., de Siqueira Tosin, M. H., Skorvanek, M., Weintraub, D., Geurtsen, G.J., and the members of the IPMDS Clinical Outcome Assessment Scientific Evaluation Committee (2025). Neuropsychological tests of memory, visuospatial, and language function in Parkinson’s disease: Review, critique, and recommendations. Movement Disorders., 40(5), 773-991. doi.org/10.1002/mds.30166
Cronin-Golomb, A., McDaniels, B., Mathur, S., Pontone, G.M., Reynolds, G.O., Subramanian, I. Using principles of cognitive behavioral therapy to treat anxiety in Parkinson’s disease. Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, 10.1002/mdc3.70056. Online ahead of print, March 21, 2025. doi:10.1002/mdc3.70056
Martinez, J.E., Bocanegra, Y., Baena, A., Langella, S., Giudicessi, A., Sanchez, J.S., Aguillon, D., Cronin-Golomb, A., Lopera, F., Quiroz, Y.T. Religious stress coping is associated with lower entorhinal tau pathology and better memory performance in autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Online ahead of print, April 3, 2025. doi: 10.1177/13872877251331569
Mukadam, N., Kinger, S.B., Neargarder, S., Salazar, R.D., Pluim McDowell, C., Wall, J., Kaplan, R.I., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2025). Changes in subjective cognitive and social functioning in Parkinson’s disease from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic. Healthcare, 13 (1), 70. Epub 1-1-25. Special issue, Human Health Before, During, and After COVID-19. doi: 10.3390/healthcare13010070
Pluim McDowell, C., Martinez, J. E., Giudicessi, A., Munera, D., Vila-Castelar, C., Guzmán-Vélez, E., Ramirez-Gomez, L., Duffy, J. F., Cronin-Golomb, A., Quiroz, Y. T. (2025). Risk factors for poor sleep quality and subjective cognitive decline in older adults living in the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic. Healthcare, 13(6), 675. doi: 10.3390/healthcare13060675
Barthelemy, O.J., Shirey, A.J., Anakwe, S., Neargarder, S., DeGutis, J., Cronin-Golomb, A. (in press). Positive associations between the personality trait of openness and verbal learning and memory in individuals with Parkinson’s disease: A pilot study. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology. Accepted 4-23-25.
Kaplan, R.I., Girnis, J., Sebastian, A., Mukadam, N., Guida, C., Ellis, T.D., Cronin-Golomb, A., Yücel, M.A. (in press). Patterns of prefrontal cortical activity associated with attention-demanding and motor aspects of dual-task walking as measured with functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Behavioral Neuroscience. Accepted 5-12-25.
Yücel, M.A., Anderson, J.E., Rogers, D., Hajirahimi, P., Farzam, P., Gao, Y., Kaplan, R.I., Braun, E.J., Mukadam, N., Duwadi, S., Carlton, L., Beeler, D., Butler, L.K., Carpenter, E., Girnis, J., Wilson, J., Tripathi, V., Zhang, Y., Sorger, B., von Lühmann, A., Somers, D.C., Cronin-Golomb, A., Kiran, S., Ellis, T.D., Boas, D.A. (in press). Inclusivity in fNIRS studies: Quantifying the impact of hair and skin characteristics on signal quality with practical recommendations for improvement. Nature Human Behaviour. Accepted April/May 2025.
Conference presentations at the International Neuropsychological Society in February 2025 in New Orleans were led by Courtney (Aul) Guida, Rini Kaplan, Jairo Martinez, Nishaat Mukadam, and Meredith Rowe. Rini also presented at the Birmingham UK meeting of the Society for fNIRS, Nishaat at the Neuroscience of the Everyday World conference in Boston, and Alice (on Rini’s behalf) at the International Congress of PD and Movement Disorders in Philadelphia.
Spring/Summer 2024:
Lots of good news to convey… First, heartiest congratulations to Rini Kaplan and Celina Pluim McDowell for defending their PhD dissertations!
Rini’s dissertation was entitled “Moving towards understanding the brain in naturalistic conditions with functional near-infrared spectroscopy: Brain activity and behavior during dual-task walking in healthy young adults and persons with Parkinson’s disease”. Here she is with her committee (from left), Drs. Terry Ellis, Joe DeGutis, Alice C-G, Meryem Yücel, and Mark Richardson; and also with her proud lab-mates Celina, Averi, Shraddha, and Nishaat. Great job, Rini! We also want to congratulate Rini on being named the Neurotechnology Officer for the Association of Neuropsychology Students and Trainees (ANST). Off to internship at UCSD, and already missed!
Congratulations too to Celina, who very ably defended her dissertation on “The association of purpose in life, loneliness, and sleep with risk of cognitive decline in older adults”. Her committee included (from left) Drs. Bonnie Wong, Alice C-G, Jeanne Duffy, and John Otis. Celina has moved on to internship at Brown University- great for her, and a loss for us, but we wish her all the best. We celebrated well– our Vision and Cognition Lab, and Dr. Quiroz’s lab!
Next up are recent conference presentations given by our talented doctoral, MA and undergraduate students. UG Jessica Sullivan (left) presented her senior honors thesis project as a poster at the Eastern Psychological Association meeting in Philadelphia, on “Cardiovascular risk factors, aging, and incidence of dementia (CAIDE) score and perceived stress are associated with subjective cognitive decline in older adults” (with doctoral student Celina Pluim McDowell). We also congratulate Jess on her excellent thesis defense. The annual meeting of the Massachusetts Neuropsychological Society was the site for posters by (center and right) MA Meredith Rowe (with doctoral student Shraddha Kinger), on “He said, she said: A qualitative study of gender differences in advice given to medical professionals by persons with Parkinson’s disease”; and UG Chad Huang (with doctoral student Courtney Aul), on “Negative global metacognitive bias in persons with Parkinson’s disease”. Well, done, all!
New lab papers: Our most recent papers include one published and two in press (available online). Former MA student Bridget Logan reported on the use of multiple measures to assess perceived stigma in PD, using data from the online BOSS-PD (Boston University Online Survey of Parkinson’s Disease) in comparison with data from our earlier in-person study, and considering the role of anxiety in stigma perception. Co-authors were current and former doctoral students Shraddha Kinger and Rob Salazar, respectively, former undergrad Amie Larum, and collaborator Sandy Neargarder. The first in-press paper was led by former doctoral student Josh Fox-Fuller, which reported on views of telehealth in persons with PD during the COVID-19 pandemic. The co-authors were doctoral students Shraddha Kinger, Rini Kaplan, Celina Pluim, former undergraduate Tim Wang, and former doctoral student Emma Weizenbaum. Doctoral student Averi Giudicessi led the second paper in press, a review of cognition in individuals with autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease. Co-authors were doctoral students Celina Pluim McDowell and Jairo Martinez, our close collaborator Yakeel Quiroz, and members of Dr. Quiroz’ team at MGH and in Colombia.
Fox-Fuller, J.T., Kinger, S.B., Kaplan, R.I., Pluim, C.F., Wang, T., Weizenbaum, E., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2024). Telehealth perceptions and experiences of persons with Parkinson’s disease during the COVID-19 pandemic. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 10(2), 195-202. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tps0000398
Giudicessi, A., McDowell, C.P., Martinez, J.E., Baena, A., Vila-Castelar, C., Norton, D., Aguirre-Acevedo, D.C., Tirado, V.,Bocanegra, Y., Guzman Velez, E., Lopera, F., Cronin-Golomb, A., Quiroz, Y.T. (2024). Cognitive outcomes in autosomal-dominant Alzheimer’s disease: A comprehensive review from a Colombian kindred with the Presenilin-1 E280A mutation. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 101, 397-415. doi: 10.3233/JAD-240360
Logan, B.A., Neargarder, S., Kinger, S.B., Larum, A.K., Salazar, R.D., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2024). Self-perceived stigma in Parkinson’s disease in an online sample: Comparison with in-person sample, role of anxiety, and relative utility of four measures of stigma perception. Applied Neuropsychology: Adult. Epub 3-5-24. PMID: 38442327. https://doi.org/10.1080/23279095.2024.2321578
Fall 2023/Winter 2024:
Congratulations to our wonderful undergraduate researchers— Chad Huang for receiving a spring Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program award, and Jessica Sullivan for having her abstract accepted for the upcoming conference of the Eastern Psychological Association.
New lab papers: The report of our intervention study in which we enhanced sustained attention to improve motor function in PD has come out in Neuropsychologia, led by collaborator Joe DeGutis and current/former doctoral students Courtney Aul and Ollie Barthelemy. A key finding was that side of PD motor onset matters for such an intervention. Coauthors include current doctoral student Shraddha Kinger and former RAs/undergraduates Breanna Davis, Shaikhah Alshuaib, and Anna Marin, and collaborator Terry Ellis. There are also two new papers led by current doctoral students. First, Averi Giudicessi published on the new contextual memory test for preclinical autosomal dominant AD developed with Yakeel Quiroz and her group of collaborators, including current doctoral students Jairo Martinez and Celina Pluim McDowell and former student Josh Fox-Fuller. Second, Rini Kaplan and Celina Pluim McDowell are co- first authors on another paper using the data from the Boston University Online Survey of Parkinson’s Disease (BOSS-PD), describing concordance between persons with PD and their informants as to many of their symptoms but with exceptions for internalized symptoms such as stigma perception and bodily discomfort. This is the first BOSS-PD paper to reflect the perspectives of the informants. Collaborators included current student Shraddha Kinger, former student Rob Salazar, former undergraduate Juliana Wall, and collaborator Sandy Neargarder. Finally, there is now a book chapter on using CBT for anxiety and depression in PD, with former doctoral students Gretchen Reynolds and Ryan Piers, summarizing some of the work we have been doing on that topic for the past few years.
DeGutis, J., Aul, C., Barthelemy, O.J., Davis, B.L., Alshuaib, S., Marin, A., Kinger, S.B., Ellis, T.D., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2023). Side of motor symptom onset predicts sustained attention deficits and motor improvements after attention training in Parkinson’s disease. Neuropsychologia, 190, Epub pages 1-10. doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108698
Giudicessi, A., Aduen, P.A., Fox-Fuller, J.T., Martinez, J.E., Gonzalez, L.A., Vila-Castelar, C., Baena, A., Pluim McDowell, C., Cronin-Golomb, A., Lopera, F., Quiroz, Y.T. (2024). The MAPP Room Memory Test: Examining contextual memory using a novel computerized test in cognitively-unimpaired individuals with autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease. Epub Jan. 8, 2024, http://dx.doi.org/10.14283/jpad.2024.7
Kaplan, R.I., Pluim McDowell, C., Wall, J., Kinger, S.B., Neargarder, S., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2024). Discordance between reports of internalized symptoms in persons with Parkinson’s disease and informants: Results from an online survey. Movement Disorders Clinical Practice Epub 1-25-24. doi: 10.1002/mdc3.13971
Reynolds, G.O., Piers, R., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2023). Cognitive-behavioral treatment for anxiety and depression in Parkinson’s disease: Efficacy and clinical application of the Unified Protocol. In: Applications of the Unified Protocol in Health Conditions, J. Osma & T.J. Farchione (eds). New York: Oxford University Press (10-6-23). doi: 10.1093/oso/9780197564295.003.0010
Spring/Summer 2023:
Congratulations to doctoral student Courtney Aul, who had a lot to celebrate. (1) Courtney received a competitive Graduate Internship Fellowship for her work at the non-profit Boston VA Research Institute. (2) She was named a Graduate Student Fellow of BU’s Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, a highly competitive award that gives her support for research, seminar development, and networking within and outside BU. (3) She was appointed a Neurophotonics Research Trainee. (4) She received a Grant in Aid of Research from Sigma Xi, the national Scientific Research Honor Society, for her project on visual sustained attention fluctuations in Parkinson’s disease. What a spring for Courtney!
And congratulations to doctoral student Nishaat Mukadam for receiving funding from the BU Women’s Guild and for being named a recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences’ inaugural Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access, Leadership (IDEAL) award! Her recommenders noted that “her commitment to DEI is aspirational and has the potential to influence multiple fields of research and clinical care for the better.” Well done, Nishaat!
Not to be outdone is doctoral student Shraddha Kinger, who has won the Walter G. McMillen Memorial Award for Parkinson’s Disease Research from APA’s Division 20 (Adult Development and Aging), joining several of our previous lab members (and current member Rini Kaplan) on this illustrious list. Shraddha will use the award to support her studies of the effects of nature exposure (greenspace) on cognition and mood in PD. Shraddha was also the recipient of the best student poster award at this year’s annual scientific session of the Massachusetts Neuropsychological Society. Congratulations, Shraddha!
More congratulations– to undergraduates (and now BU alumnae) Kaitlyn Piotrowski, Defne Yucebas, Hae In Kim, Alissa Sebastian, and Margot Packard on their graduation. As psychology majors, Kaitlyn and Defne won research/scholar awards at commencement. Likewise, we celebrate new BU MA’s Julia Glueck and Rushali Patel. We are grateful to all of you for your service to our lab and look forward to hearing about what you do next!
Finally, well done to doctoral students Jairo Martinez, Averi Giudicessi, and Courtney Aul for submitting National Research Service Award applications to NIH. It is a ton of work and just getting them in is a major accomplishment.
New lab papers: A new paper led by former doctoral student Ryan Piers described using BOSS-PD (Boston University Online Survey of Parkinson’s Disease) to show that higher prevalence of depression in women than men with PD, often reported in in-person studies, did not occur when testing online, possibly by circumventing stigma. Co-authors were former doctoral student Rob Salazar, former undergrad Samia Islam, former lab volunteer Kelly Black, and collaborator Sandy Neargarder. A second new paper featured undergraduate Defne Yucebas with strong mentoring of recent doctoral student Josh Fox-Fuller, and reported on category fluency in relation to brain pathology in autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease. Co-authors included doctoral student Celina Pluim, our close collaborator Yakeel Quiroz, and members of Dr. Quiroz’ team at MGH and in Colombia.
Piers, R.J., Black, K.C., Salazar, R.D., Islam, S. Neargarder, S., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2023). Equal prevalence of depression in men and women with Parkinson’s disease revealed through online assessment. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology. Epub 7-4-23. PMID: 37401380
Yucebas, D., Fox-Fuller, J.T., Badillo, A., Baena, A., Pluim, C., Aduen, P., Vila-Castelar, C., Bocanegra, Y., Tirado, V., Cronin-Golomb, A., Lopera, F., Quiroz, Y.T. (2023). Associations of category fluency clustering and switching performance with in vivo brain pathology in Autosomal Dominant Alzheimer’s Disease. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society. Epub pages 1-7. PMID: 37185154.
Fall/Winter 2022-23:
Congratulations to doctoral student Nishaat Mukadam on receiving the spring Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (JEDI) award from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences! The award recognizes Nishaat’s research associated with the Inclusivity Project. The project is on the impact of skin pigmentation, hair type, color, and volume on the quality of the brain activity signal obtained through functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The fall (inaugural) JEDI award went to doctoral student Mathena Abramson. Well done!
More congratulations– to doctoral student Jairo Martinez for receiving an Honorable Mention in the competition for a Ford Fellowship. It is an honor to be in this category.
And congratulations to our stellar group of four doctoral students who received Clara Mayo Research awards from the Department to support their research studies: Rini Kaplan (humor in Parkinson’s disease, PD, using fNIRS), Celina Pluim (sleep and circadian function in aging and mild cognitive impairment), Shraddha Kinger (on greenspace exposure and cognition in PD), and Nishaat Mukadam (on subjective executive function in PD, using fNIRS).
We are also thrilled to congratulate our colleague Dr. Yakeel Quiroz on winning the Early Career Award from the International Neuropsychological Society for her great work on preclinical Alzheimer’s disease. So well deserved!
Also, the Society for Neuroscience has recognized Dr. Alice Cronin-Golomb with the Bernice Grafstein Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Mentoring, recognizing her efforts in the mentorship of women in neuroscience. The photo shows an SfN staff member with Dr. C-G on the right. In the center is co-recipient Dr. Shubha Tole of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. A description of the awardees is here; the SfN slideshow is here.
New lab papers: One led by doctoral student Josh Fox-Fuller, on a new test that may be sensitive to preclinical AD, with contributions by fellow doctoral student Jairo Martinez and other members of the lab of collaborator Dr. Yakeel Quiroz; one led by doctoral student Shraddha Kinger and MA student Truley Juneau on changes in psychiatric symptoms in people with PD from before to during the COVID era, with contributions from doctoral students Rini Kaplan, Celina Pluim, Josh Fox-Fuller, and Nishaat Mukadam, as well as former doctoral student Rob Salazar, former undergrad Tim Wang, and collaborator Sandy Neargarder; and last but not least, the first randomized controlled trial to show the efficacy of telehealth cognitive behavioral therapy to treat depression and other non-motor symptoms of PD including cognition, led by former doctoral student Ryan Piers with contributions from collaborators Todd Farchione, AJ Rosellini, and collaborator/former student Bonnie Wong.
Fox-Fuller, J., Martinez, J., Baena, A., Londono, N., Munera, D., Noriega, D., Vila-Castelar, C., Aduen, P., Lopera, F., Cronin-Golomb, A., Quiroz, Y.T. (2023). Memory for semantically related objects differentiates cognitively unimpaired autosomal dominant mutation carriers from non-carrier family members. Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease. E-pub before print, 1-25-23. http://dx.doi.org/10.14283/jpad.2023.14
Kinger, S.B., Juneau, T., Kaplan, R.I., Pluim, C.F., Fox-Fuller, J.T., Wang, T., Mukadam, N., Neargarder, S., Salazar, R.D., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2023). Changes in apathy, depression, and anxiety in Parkinson’s disease from before to during the COVID-19 era. Brain Sciences, 13, 199. Epub 10-24-2023. Special issue, Apathy and Cognitive Impairment in Neurological Disorders. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13020199
Piers, R.J., Farchione, T.J., Wong, B., Rosellini, A.J., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2023). Telehealth transdiagnostic cognitive behavioral therapy for depression in Parkinson’s disease: A pilot randomized controlled trial. Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, 10(1), 79-85. doi: 10.1002/mdc3.13587.
Summer 2022:
Congratulations to doctoral student Rini Kaplan on receiving the APA Division 20 (Adult Development and Aging) McMillen Award for Parkinson’s Disease Research! Rini will receive the award in person when she attends the annual APA convention. Her selection continues our lab’s strong tradition, with previous winners being Justin Centi (in the award’s inaugural year of 2011), Deepti Putcha (2013), Ollie Barthelemy (2017), and Emma Weizenbaum (2020). It is great that we have so many excellent students who have committed to working on PD and other neurodegenerative disorders.
Lab papers: Former undergraduate students Samia Islam and Taylor Maynard are lead authors on papers on making use of remote data collection techniques. Samia’s paper was on stigma in people with Parkinson’s disease with additional health conditions, with co-authors being long-time collaborator Sandy Neargarder, doctoral students Shraddha Kinger and Josh Fox-Fuller, and former doctoral student Rob Salazar. Taylor’s paper was on use of a popular smartphone app in comparison with actigraphy to assess sleep, with Sandy Neargarder and former doctoral student Erica Appleman.
Islam, S.S., Neargarder, S., Kinger, S.B., Fox-Fuller, J.T., Salazar, R.D., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2022). Perceived stigma and quality of life in Parkinson’s disease with additional health conditions. General Psychiatry, 35:e100653. doi:10.1136/gpsych-2021-100653.
Maynard, T.,Appleman, E., Cronin-Golomb, A., Neargarder, S. (2021). Objective measurement of sleep by smartphone application: Comparison with actigraphy and relation to self-reported sleep. Exploration of Medicine, 2 [Online First] (special issue on Digital Biomarkers: The New Frontier for Medicine and Research). Published online Sept 27, 2021 (pp. 1-10). doi.org/10.37349/emed.2021.00057
Spring 2022:
Congratulations to Josh Fox-Fuller on defending his dissertation, “Working memory in preclinical autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease”. It was terrific! Here’s Josh with his committee, from left Alice C-G, Yakeel Quiroz, Mark Richardson, David Somers, and Michael Lyons. Josh is now at internship at Emory. His fellow students will especially miss their “Lab Dad”: from left Juliana, Nishaat, Shraddha, Celina, Josh, Jairo, and Rini.
First in-person conference in two years! The Cognitive Aging Conference in Atlanta in April, a great experience. Excellent presentations by our doctoral students Nishaat Mukadam (right photo; on Changes in Subjective Cognitive and Social Functioning in Parkinson’s Disease: the COVID-19 Era) and Shraddha Kinger (left photo, left, with Alice on right) and undergrads Victoria Calendrino and Gabe Cronin-Golomb (on Perceptual Pareidolia Tests to Predict Visual Hallucinations in Parkinson’s Disease).
were both instrumental in getting our pareidolia study off the ground and we are grateful. (How did non-psych major Gabe get drafted into working on the study? His last name has something to do with it, along with lots of coding experience to help us put together and launch the study survey).
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More congratulations to our doctoral students– Celina Pluim and Shraddha Kinger received Clara Mayo Research Awards to fund their upcoming research projects, Celina’s on sleep, circadian rhythm, and cognition in older adults with and without cognitive impairment, and Shraddha on smartphone ecological momentary assessment for visual hallucinations in Parkinson’s disease.
And more congratulations, this time to our super undergraduate researchers. Alissa Sebastian and Defne Yucebas received funding for full-time summer research through the BU Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). Alissa’s project uses fNIRS to examine cognitive and motor control; Defne, mentored by Dr. Yakeel Quiroz, will study naming and memory in relation to in vivo pathology in autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease. Victoria Calandrino and Gabe Cronin-Golomb received conference travel funds from UROP and from the BU College of Arts and Sciences Student Academic Enhancement Fund to present their research at the Cognitive Aging Conference in Atlanta. They are coauthors on the poster describing the development of perceptual tests of pareidolia to predict visual hallucinations in Parkinson’s disease. Well done, undergrads!
Fall 2021:
Congratulations to Dr. Olivier Barthelemy on receiving the Ph.D.! The Class of 2020 waited a long time for their commencement ceremonies and finally had them, on a bright October day full of festivity. It was an honor to hood Ollie and formally send him out into the community of scholars. He is now a postdoc at Easter Seals.
New lab paper: Former undergraduate Taylor Maynard (of Bridgewater State University), former BU doctoral student Erica Appleman, colleague Sandy Neargarder and I have a new paper reporting results from a small study of use of a popular smartphone app for sleep vs. objective sleep measure by actigraphy.
Maynard, T., Appleman, E., Cronin-Golomb, A., Neargarder, S. (2021). Objective measurement of sleep by smartphone application: Comparison with actigraphy and relation to self-reported sleep. Exploration of Medicine, 2 [Online First] (special issue on Digital Biomarkers: The New Frontier for Medicine and Research). Published online Sept 27, 2021 (pp. 1-10). https://doi.org/10.37349/emed.2021.00057
Summer 2021:
Our lab members who have moved on are doctoral student Ryan Piers, now on clinical internship at Northwestern; former MA graduate Luke Poole, who is beginning the PhD program in Kinesiology at Rutgers; and undergraduates Juliana Wall and Dong-Ho Kim, and MA graduate Hannah Weibley, who are going to research assistant positions at, respectively, Boston Children’s Hospital, Drexel, and Yale. We thank them most sincerely for all their work in our group.
Four lab papers:
Doctoral students Emma Weizenbaum, Ryan Piers, and Josh Fox-Fuller are lead authors on three 2021 papers on the timely topic of remote assessment and therapy. Doctoral students Celina Pluim and Rini Kaplan are co-authors on the latter study together with BU undergrads Julie Ngo, Juliana Anzai, Defne Yucebas, and recent graduate Mimi Briggs. The fourth paper is a review of recent advances in the design and applications of functional near-infrared spectroscopy in the lead-up to the Neuroscience of the Everyday World (NEW). That paper was led by Alexander von Lühmann and Meryem Yücel. We acknowledge our other collaborators on these studies: Daniel Fulford, John Torous, Emma Pinsky, and Vijaya Kolachalama (Weizenbaum paper), Todd Farchione and Bonnie Wong (Piers paper), Yakeel Quiroz and Paula Aduen (Fox-Fuller paper), and Yilei Zheng, Antonio Ortega-Martinez., Swathi Kiran, David Somers, Louis Awad, Terry Ellis, and David Boas (Von Lühmann /Yücel paper).
Fox-Fuller, J.T., Ngo, J., Pluim, C.F., Kaplan, R.I., Kim, D.H., Anzai, J.A.U., Yucebas, D., Briggs, S.M., Aduen, P.A., Cronin-Golomb, A., Quiroz, Y.T. (2021). Initial investigation of test-retest reliability of home-to-home teleneuropsychological assessment in healthy, English-speaking adults. The Clinical Neuropsychologist. Published online 7-27-21 (pp. 1-15) ahead of print. doi: 10.1080/13854046.2021.1954244
Piers, R.J., Farchione, T.J., Wong, B., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2021). Telehealth cognitive behavioral therapy for depression in Parkinson’s disease: A case study. Psychotherapy (special issue on Health in Psychology). Published online Jun 24, 2021. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34166038. doi:10.1037/pst0000367.
Von Lühmann, A., Zheng, Y.,Ortega-Martinez, A., Kiran, S., Somers, D.C., Cronin-Golomb, A., Awad, L.N., Ellis, T.D., Boas, D.A., Yücel, M.A. (2021). Towards Neuroscience of the Everyday World (NEW) using functional near infrared spectroscopy. Current Opinion in Biomedical Engineering, 18 (Jun):100272. doi: 10.1016/j.cobme.2021.100272. PMC7943029.
Weizenbaum, E., Fulford, D., Torous, J., Pinsky, E., Kolachalama, V.B., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2021). Smartphone-based neuropsychological assessment in Parkinson’s disease: Feasibility, validity, and contextually-driven variability in cognition. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society. Published online May 17, 2021 (pp. 1-13) ahead of print. PMID: 33998438. doi:10.1017/S1355617721000503.
More congratulations: Celina was awarded a T32 training grant to study sleep, and Rini was appointed a student member of the Ethics Subcommittee of APA’s Society for Clinical Neuropsychology’s Public Interest Advisory Committee.
New grant support: We received grants from BU’s Digital Health Initiative (DHI) and Institute for Health System Innovation and Policy (IHSIP) to develop our new study of remote assessment of non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, led by doctoral student Shraddha Kinger. Our collaborators are Daniel Fulford, Melissa Amick, Marie Saint-Hilaire, and Cathi Thomas. We also received a pilot grant from the BU Alzheimer Disease Center to study stress, family support, and memory loss in older Latinos, led by Martha Tompson and Yakeel Quiroz.
Spring 2021:
Congratulations to current doctoral student Shraddha Kinger for receiving a Clara Mayo Research Award from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences! The award is for Shraddha’s work on our online project, BOSS-PD (Boston University Online Survey Study of Parkinson’s Disease) and its current offshoot, PD-COVID.
And congratulations to former lab member, Abhishek Jaywant, on being named a 2021 Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science! Abhi just published an important new paper, “Frequency and profile of objective cognitive deficits in hospitalized patients recovering from COVID-19”, which you can access free online. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7884062/. He also published a popular op-ed piece called “What Working with COVID survivors taught me”.
Two new lab papers came out in early 2021, one on retinal changes as a biomarker for preclinical Alzheimer’s disease (with former doctoral student Yakeel Quiroz) and the other on the relation of contrast sensitivity to visual hallucinations in Parkinson’s disease (led by former doctoral student Mirella Díaz-Santos, and with former doctoral student Rob Salazar and former undergraduate Zach Monge). Congratulations to all collaborators!
Armstrong, G.W., Kim, L.A., Vingopoulos, F., Park J.Y., Garg, I., Kasetty, M., Silverman, R.F., Zeng, R., Douglas, V.P., Lopera, F., Baena, A., Giraldo, M., Norton, D., Cronin-Golomb, A., Arboleda-Velasquez, J.F., Quiroz, Y.T., Miller, J.B. (20).Retinal imaging findings in PSEN-1-associated early onset familial Alzheimer’s disease before onset of cognitive symptoms. JAMA Ophthalmology. doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2020.4909. Published online November 12, 2020.
Díaz-Santos, M., Monge, Z.A., Salazar, R.D., Gilmore, G.C., Neargarder, S., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2021). Increasing contrast improves object perception in Parkinson’s disease with visual hallucinations. Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, 8(1), 51-59. Published online November 17, 2020. doi.org/10.1002/mdc3.13104
Congratulations to Ollie Barthelemy on defending his dissertation! Ollie held his defense in August 2020 on the project entitled, “Psychosocial impact on learning, memory, and creativity in populations at risk for dopamine network dysfunction”. He’s in the lower right of the Zoom photo (in DE-FENSE mode) with committee members Joe DeGutis, Alice Cronin-Golomb, and Sandy Neargarder (top row) and Mark Richardson and Michael Lyons (bottom row). Great job, Ollie!
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Congratulations to Emma Weizenbaum on winning the 2020 Walter G. McMillen Memorial Award for Parkinson’s Disease Research, from the American Psychological Association’s Div 20 (Adult Development and Aging)! The McMillen award is designed to encourage graduate student interest in research on Parkinson’s disease. 
There is an award (plaque and honorarium) that is usually presented at APA’s convention in August; at the remote conference Emma’s award will be announced, with further acknowledgement of her accomplishment on the Division 20 webpage and in the Fall edition of the APA Division 20 newsletter. The award is based on Emma’s dissertation research.
Our lab has been honored with this award three times in the past, including to Justin Centi (in its inaugural year, 2011), to Deepti Putcha in 2013, and most recently to Ollie Barthelemy in 2017. Emma is a worthy addition to this list.
Emma defended her dissertation in May (our lab’s first doctoral defense by Zoom). Her project was entitled, “Cognition ‘in the wild’: Using smartphones to assess cognitive variability in healthy adults and individuals with Parkinson’s disease”. Here she is in the top row with her committee and other faculty including Alice Cronin-Golomb and Bonnie Wong; Michael Lyons, Vijaya Kolachalama, Dan Fulford; and John Torous. She is currently on internship at MGH and has now accepted a postdoc to stay at MGH/Harvard Medical School. Well done, Emma!
Rini Kaplan has been named a trainee in BU’s NSF-funded Neurophotonics National Research Traineeship Program, where she will have access to professional development, mentoring, Student Leadership Council, and more (/neurophotonics-nrt/trainee-info/). She is the first such trainee from our lab or from the Clinical Program.
“Cortical thickness and cognition in the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia” (our first defense by Zoom!) Her committee included Drs. Yakeel Quiroz (upper right) and Kristin Long (upper left). In the fall, Samia will begin the PhD program at U Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It’s been great to have her working with us.
An important journal article has just been published by former doctoral student Uraina Clark, “Addressing racism and disparities in the biomedical sciences” (U.S. Clark & Y.L. Hurd), in Nature Human Behavior, July 10 2020. doi: 10.1038/s41562-020-0917-7. It’s an excellent contribution to current hard conversations. Uraina’s research program at Mt. Sinai focuses on neuropsychological problems in HIV including neural mechanisms, and the impact of various types of stress, such as childhood adversity or chronic stress, in cognition, behavior, and brain changes in people with and without HIV. We are grateful for Uraina’s terrific work.
Reynolds, G.O., Saint-Hilaire, M.-H.; Thomas, C.A.; Barlow, D.H., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2020). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety in Parkinson’s disease. Behavior Modification, 44(4), 552-579. Epub 2019 Mar 31. PMID: 30931594. doi.org/10.1177/0145445519838828.
Fuller, J.T., Cronin-Golomb, A., Gatchel, J.R., Norton, D.J., Guzmán-Vélez, E., Jacobs, H.I.L., Hansseuw, B., Pardilla-Delgado, E., Artola, A., Baena, A., Bocanegra, Y., Chen, K., Tariot, P., Johnson, K., Sperling, R.A., Reiman, E.M., Lopera, F., Quiroz, Y.T. (2019). Cognitive and brain imaging markers of presenilin1 e280a autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease: Findings from the Colombian kindred. Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease, 6, 112-120.
Salazar, R.D., Moon, K.L.M., Neargarder, S., Cronin-Golomb, A. (2019). Spatial judgment in Parkinson’s disease: Contributions of attentional and executive dysfunction. Behavioral Neuroscience, 133(4), 350-360. PMC6629466.
Salazar, R.D., Weizenbaum, E., Ellis, T.D., Earhart, G.M., Ford, M.P., Dibble, L.E., & Cronin-Golomb, A. (2019). Predictors of self-perceived stigma in Parkinson’s disease. Parkinsonism and Related Disorders, 60, 76-80. PMID:30297211
Wu, J.Q. & Cronin-Golomb, A. (2019). Temporal associations between sleep and daytime functioning in Parkinson’s disease: A smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment. Behavioral Sleep Medicine. Published online June 14, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/15402002.2019.1629445
Cronin-Golomb, A., Reynolds, G.O., Salazar, R.D., Saint-Hilaire, M.-H. (2019). Parkinson’s disease and Parkinson-plus syndromes. In: Oxford Handbook of Adult Cognitive Disorders, R.A. Stern & M.L. Alosco (eds.). New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 600-630. E-pub May 2019, doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190664121.013.28
Above, from left, Ollie, Dan, Alice, and Mark Cronin-Golomb post-Dan’s presentation.
Defenses! March and April were busy with doctoral defenses by Jade on “Circadian rhythm and sleep in Parkinson’s disease: Associations with cognition and mood”, and Erica on “Cognitive dysfunction, depression, and inflammation as potential pre-diagnostic markers of Parkinson’s disease”.
They’ve now finished internships and started postdocs to Duke (Jade) and Bedford VA (Erica). Their committees: In common are Michael Lyons, Sandy Neargarder, and Alice Cronin-Golomb. Jade also had Bonnie Wong, and Terry Ellis (not pictured, but see her below in Rob’s defense photo). Erica also had Marcy Tompson and Rhoda Au.
April is also when undergraduates defend their senior honors theses. Congratulations to our terrific undergrad, Beyza Sahin Gun, who presented her thesis on painting in individuals with Parkinson’s disease to her committee, including Donna Pincus, Alice Cronin-Golomb, and Erika Wells (left photo).
It’s not all standing around for static group shots, as Jade and Erica demonstrate at the traditional post-defense celebration at Eastern Standard (right photo).
Memories of 2017
• Ollie Barthelemy won the 2017 Walter G. McMillen Award for Parkinson’s Disease Research from the American Psychological Association, Division 20 (Adult Development and Aging). Here he is accepting the award at the APA meeting in August in Washington, D.C. Ollie is the third BU clinical neuropsychology student to win this award. Justin Centi won the inaugural award in 2011, and Deepti Putcha won in 2013.
• Defenses and graduations! Rob Salazar defended his dissertation last June. His defense committee: Alice Cronin-Golomb, Bonnie Wong, Michael Lyons, Sandy Neargarder, and Terry Ellis. Gretchen Reynolds donned the cap and gown for graduation in May.
• Erica Appleman and Jade Wu received Clara Mayo Research Awards from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, spring 2017. Great support for great research!
• Jade Wu had a busy spring semester. Besides winning a Clara Mayo Research Award, she was also Featured Trainee in the January newsletter of the Sleep Research Society, and took first place in the Boston University 3 Minute Thesis competition. To see more of Jade in action, visit BU’s website about it .
• Emma Weizenbaum was named the Outstanding Teaching Fellow of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences for academic year 2016-2017. Emma has been TF for PS101 and for PS338 Neuropsychology. Her students love her and so do the instructors she serves with.
• Joshua Fuller is no longer our “new” doctoral student, as he is now finishing Year 2. In 2017 he came to us from Texas A&M University, where he won a Graduate Fellowship, Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, and Brown Foundation- Earl Rudder Memorial Outstanding Student Award.
Former Student News
Jade Wu, PhD, is now a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University, specializing in health psychology with focus on behavioral sleep medicine and women’s mental health. Here’s her new site where you can find out what she is up to.
Erica Appleman, PhD, is now a neuropsychology postdoctoral fellow at Bedford Veterans Hospital in Bedford MA.
Mirella Diaz-Santos, PhD (right) met up with another veteran of our program, Rebecca Melrose, PhD, at the 2018 Advanced Psychometrics Workshop at Lake Tahoe this year. Both are based at UCLA but only now finally found each other. Small world when you’ve come from the BU Clinical Psychology Program!
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Karen D. Sullivan, PhD, ABPP opened her private practice, Pinehurst Neuropsychology, envisioning a new type of brain health experience for patients and their families. With a passion for psychoeducation and evidence-based recommendations, she has developed a regional following and loves to spread the word about the power of neuropsychology! You can learn more about how she is doing that in a 2017 article in an award-winning NC magazine for older adults. In 2016, Dr. Sullivan took her brain outreach to the next level with the I CARE FOR YOUR BRAIN program, offered both online and in retirement communities. The goal of her program is to combat misinformation about brain health targeted to older adults, including some so-called ”brain fitness” products that have little to no scientific efficacy, with evidence-based recommendations that actually work.
Uraina Clark, PhD (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York), and Daniel Seichepine, PhD (University of New Hampshire, Manchester) were named “Rising Stars” and they, along with Bonnie Wong, PhD of our lab, were invited to attend the Geriatrics Research conference: From Bench to Bedside Workshop, National Institute on Aging U13/American Geriatrics Society in October 2017 in Washington, D.C.
Yakeel Quiroz, PhD had her research on familial Alzheimer’s disease featured in congressional testimony given in June, 2017 by the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins—one of only three early-career investigators to be so featured. Watch the testimony here. Find out more about her very important research by clicking here. For a very different career path leading to the same AD study, see this profile of another of our former students, Dr. Mike Ward, from Genentech, Research and Early Development (gRED) news, Oct. 2016.
See our Awards and Recognitions page for a full list of accolades of our current students and some of our former students, too.
Your Brain on Bingo!
Watch this informative video, where Dr. Cronin-Golomb discusses Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and the way visual cues effect patient’s ability to comprehend Bingo.
Visual factors in Alzheimer’s disease and food intake
Read about one of our publications in which food intake in Alzheimer’s disease was increased by manipulating visual factors – in this case, changing the color of the dinner plates.