Biosketch

Carol Barnes is a Regents’ Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Neurology and Neuroscience, the Evelyn F. McKnight Endowed Chair for Learning and Memory in Aging, Director of the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, and Director of the Division of Neural Systems, Memory and Aging at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. She earned her B.A. in psychology from the University of California at Riverside, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She did postdoctoral training in neuropsychology and neurophysiology in the Department of Psychology at Dalhousie University, The Institute of Neurophysiology, University of Oslo, and in the Cerebral Functions Group at University College London. Barnes is past-president of the 38,000 member Society for Neuroscience, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and an elected Foreign Member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters. She is recipient of the 2013 Gerard Prize in Neuroscience and the 2014 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions.

Research Interests

The central goal of Barnes research program is to understand how the brain changes during normative aging and what the functional consequences of this are for information processing and memory. Her research program involves behavioral, electrophysiological and molecular biological approaches to the study of young and aged rodents and non-human primates. This work provides a basis for understanding the basic mechanisms of normal aging in the brain and sets a background against which it is possible to assess the effects of pathological changes such as Alzheimer's disease. Current work also includes assessments of therapeutic agents that may be promising for optimizing cognitive healthspan across the lifespan.

Membership Type

Member

Election Year

2018

Primary Section

Section 28: Systems Neuroscience

Secondary Section

Section 52: Psychological and Cognitive Sciences