Sara Gallant, PhD

I completed my PhD in psychology at Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada) with Dr. Lixia Yang where I concentrated my research in cognitive aging. During my doctorate, I investigated how healthy aging influences metacognitive monitoring and control of emotional memory as well as the neural mechanisms underlying these processes using electroencephalography (EEG). After completing my PhD, I moved to Los Angeles to begin my postdoctoral fellowship in the Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California. I joined the lab of Dr. Mara Mather so that I could study age-related changes in how the noradrenergic system influences memory selectivity under emotionally arousing conditions. To address our questions, we are using a combination of behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging techniques that enable us to study activity in LC-NE system and its effect on cognition in healthy aging and Alzheimer’s disease.