Student Research Assistants
Raksha Anand, Ph.D.
Research Clinician
Research Interests: Discourse gist processing in normal aging, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s disease, and higher level semantic processing in mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias
Matt Brier
Stephanie Chiu Wong, M.S., CCC/SLP
Research Clinician
Doctoral Student
Research Interest: Using discourse (connected language) to give diagnostic input and strategies to both adults who may have degenerative brain disorders (particularly Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration) and their families
Email: sbcwong@utdallas.edu
Teresa George
Research Assistant
Teresa is an undergraduate neuroscience major at The University of Texas at Dallas. She plans to pursue a degree in medicine and research.
Research interests: Aging diseases, particularly Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and the use of modern technology such as fMRI to find out the signs of these degenerative diseases at the earlier stages and hopefully slow down the degenerative processes that are occurring. Currently, she is working with Dr. Richard King on fractal imaging of cortical areas on Alzheimer's related patients.
Email: txg052000@utdallas.edu
Asha Kuppachi, M.S., OTR/L
Graduate Researcher
Doctoral Student
Research Interests: Developing novel cognitive behavioral treatment strategies to improve brain function in adults with brain injury, including traumatic brain injury and stroke. Ms. Kuppachi’s research will evaluate the effectiveness of these treatment strategies using cognitive, functional, intervention, and fMRI measures.
Email: asha.kuppachi@utdallas.edu
Mary Kathryn (MK) Reagor
Graduate Research Assistant
Doctoral Student
Research Interests: Using EEG analysis techniques to gain insight about cognitive function. Specifically, neuronal synchrony during learning and comprehension.
Email: mary.reagor@utdallas.edu
Sandra L. Zoccoli, M.A.
Doctoral Candidate (Southern Methodist University)
Research Interests: Research interests are in the area of memory and cognition, particularly semantic memory. A fundamental function of the human brain is the ability to retrieve information from the semantic memory store. This ability is crucial to our capacity to function as independent human beings. Degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Dementia with Lewy Bodies, and Frontotemporal dementia seriously impact a person’s ability to independently engage in everyday activities. Such diseases introduce many burdens to the family and high costs to society both financially and in terms of lost productivity. Current research goals are to learn more about the storage and retrieval of information in the semantic memory system, to learn more about how this system is impacted by neurodegenerative diseases such as those listed above, and to learn how this knowledge may be applied in the differentiation of such disease processes.
Email: szoccoli@smu.edu
