The focus of the seminar series is to call for experts related to academia and research in the areas related to biomechanics, variability, motor disorders, physical therapy, and related studies.

Presentation Title:Measuring the mechanical properties of brain tissue: Biomarkers of cognitive success and failure.

Presentation Abstract:

The advent of new technologies creates new opportunities to ask questions and make discoveries. In recent years, magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) has emerged as a useful tool for measuring microstructural tissue health in the brain using a clinical MRI scanner. Dr. Schwarb and her colleagues have pioneered the application of MRE to the study of human cognition. In this talk, Dr. Schwarb demonstrates how this new technology is being applied to the study of human memory, and how the use of this technique, coupled with sensitive measures of behavior, has allowed scientists to investigate the relationship between brain health and memory performance in previously unexplored populations and across the lifespan.

About the speaker:

Dr. Hillary Schwarb is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Prior to joining UNL, Dr. Schwarb earned a Ph.D. in Cognition and Brain Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois, before working as an independent research scientist at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute until 2023. Her current research interests are on the study of human learning and memory, using a range of tools including behavioral assessments, eye-tracking, and neuroimaging techniques to investigate how memory systems are organized and controlled. Her research primarily focuses on understanding the hippocampal memory network and its alterations in both typical and pathological conditions, such as aging, traumatic brain injury, and methamphetamine misuse.