INS Graduate Student Research Award Recipients

This award is given in honor of the contributions of Dr. Phillip Rennick and to recognize the impact he has had in the area of neuropsychology. The prize is awarded at the Society’s Annual and Mid-Year Meetings for the best research presented by a graduate student. The recipient is selected at the discretion of each Meeting Program Chair. No formal application is necessary (all graduate student submissions are considered).

* Award recipients receive an honorarium of $500 USD.

Micah Savin

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 50th Annual Meeting
New Orleans, Virtual Meeting – February 2-4, 2022

Cognitive aging is a dynamic and variable process, wherein changes inherent to aging influence cognitive function across time. Little is known regarding cognitive aging among American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) adults, both within and outside the context of clinical conditions (e.g., HIV). AI/AN health disparities have been described in HIV that may accentuate trajectories of cognitive aging (e.g., immunosuppression). This longitudinal study aimed to describe trajectories of cognitive aging among a cohort of HIV-/+ AI/AN adults.

Talia Nardo

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2021 Mid-Year Meeting
Melbourne, Australia – June 30 – July 3, 2021

“Cognitive Rehabilitation for Substance Use Disorder: Results from the ACE Stepped-Wedge Cluster Randomised Trial.” (Macquarie University, AUS)

Lindsay Rotblatt

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 49th Annual Meeting
San Diego, Virtual Meeting – February 2-5, 2021

Findings from this study suggest that both individual (e.g. obesity, high cholesterol) and aggregate VRF burden increased odds of naMCI for Black/AA, but not White, older adults. These results may reflect a compound disadvantage related to racism/marginalization and support the continued efforts toward examining underlying mechanisms contributing to these observed discrepancies in how VRFs confer risk of MCI (e.g., access to quality healthcare and education, neighborhood factors, chronic stress due to systemic racism). Future studies will begin to explore some of the social forces that likely impact cognition in ACTIVE as well as examine the associations between VRFs, race, and progression from CN to MCI over 10 years to better capture these long-term effects in late life.

Joshua Fox-Fuller

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 48th Annual Meeting
Denver, Colorado, USA – February 5-8, 2020

Findings from carriers in this ADAD cohort suggest that whereas entorhinal tau binding moderates the association between age and cortical thickness in the preclinical stage, both entorhinal tau and neocortical amyloid-β moderate this association when considering mutation carriers with MCI as well.

Luana Teixeira Batista

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2019 Mid-Year Meeting
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – July 10-12, 2019

The abilities of reading words and writing Arabic numerals share cognitive mechanisms. The explanatory models, ADAPT and Double Route, include automatic and controlled processing. The main objective of the study was to investigate the association between automatic and controlled processing in reading strategies and types of errors. The sample was 496 children, aged 7 to 11 years (M = 8.84, SD = 0.81, 53.8% female), with normal intelligence (Percentile> 10), 3 or 4th grade of Elementary School in Brazil.

Danielle Shaked

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 47th Annual Meeting
New York City, New York, USA – February 20-23, 2019

There is a growing literature demonstrating a link between lower socioeconomic status (SES) and poorer neuroanatomical health, such as smaller total and regional gray and white matter volumes. Little is known, however, about the relation between SES and white matter integrity (WMI). Here we examined the relation between SES and WMI of the brain’s primary cortical regions, and evaluated potential moderating influences of age and self-identified race.

Maximillian Friehs

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2018 Mid-Year Meeting
Prague, Czech Republic – July 18-20, 2018

The goal of these studies was to explore the possibilities of modulating Stop-Signal-Task (SST) performance via transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The Stop-Signal Task (SST) is assumed to reliably measure response inhibition, that is, in this task participants sometimes have to withhold a response according to the onset of a sudden cue. The response inhibition process is calculated by the Stop-Signal Reaction Time (SSRT; for review see Verbruggen & Logan, 2009). The right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) plays a key role in goal directed cognitive control in general and crucially its activation is correlated with SST performance. It was hypothesized that anodal tDCS over the rDLPFC would lead to an improvement in the response inhibition process, while cathodal should impair it.

Maximillian Friehs

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 46th Annual Meeting
Washington, D.C, USA – February 14-17, 2018

Establishing distinct Parkinson’s disease (PD) subtypes could inform physiological underpinnings related to PD’s heterogeneous phenotype and progression. This study examined PD subtypes in recently diagnosed de novo patients based on multiple clinical variables and analyzed associated cognitive and motor symptom trajectories.

Jessica Vicentini

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2017 Mid-Year Meeting
Cape Town, South Africa – July 5-8, 2017

Abnormal DMN functional connectivity was found following stroke in sub acute stage. There was a natural recovery of this network six months post stroke. Our findings are exploratory, and further research may facilitate the understanding of potential mechanisms underlying selfreferential processing in stroke recovery.

Rowan Saloner

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 45th Annual Meeting
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA – February 1-4, 2017

Traditional episodic memory tests employ a delayed recall length ranging from 10-30 minutes. However, these tests may be insensitive to subtle neuroanatomical changes found in early disease or agerelated decline. We aimed to determine the sensitivity of a 1-week delayed recall paradigm to both medial temporal lobe (MTL) structure and subjective memory symptoms among cognitively normal older adults.

Jessica Reeve

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2016 Mid-Year Meeting
London, England, UK – July 6-8, 2016

Best Submission By A Graduate Student

Belinda Yew

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 44th Annual Meeting
Boston, Massachusetts, USA – February 3-6, 2016

Elevated regional cerebrovascular resistance has been identified in Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) relative to cognitively normal samples but how cerebrovascular stiffening relates to amyloid-β remains to be explored.

Joyce Kootker

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2015 Mid-Year Meeting
Sydney, Australia – July 1-4, 2015

Taylor Kuhn

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 43rd Annual Meeting
Denver, Colorado, USA – February 4-7, 2015

Evidence for structural connectivity patterns within the medial temporal lobe derives primarily from post-mortem histological studies. In humans, the parahippocampal gyrus (PHg) is subdivided into parahippocampal (PHc) and perirhinal (PRc) cortices which receive input from distinct cortical networks and send distinct efferent projections to the entorhinal cortex (ERc). The PHc projects primarily to the medial ERc (M-ERc). The PRc projects primarily to the lateral portion of the ERc (L-ERc). Both M-ERc and L-ERc, via the perforant pathway, project to the dentate gyrus and hippocampal (HC) subfields. Until the recent advent of novel imaging techniques, these neural circuits could not be visualized in vivo.

Dror Dotan

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2014 Mid-Year Meeting
Jerusalem, Israel – July 9-11, 2014

What is the scope of the syntactic processes that handle multi-digit numbers? Can the meaning of two-digit Arabic numbers be accessed even if a syntactic deficit prevents accessing their verbal-phonological representations?

Sara Heverly-Fitt

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 42nd Annual Meeting
Seattle, Washington, USA – February 12-15, 2014

Presented for the Best Submission by a Graduate Student

Investigating a Proposed Model of Social Competence in Children with Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI)

Correne DeCarlo

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2013 Mid-Year Meeting
Amsterdam, the Netherlands – July 10-13, 2013

Presented for the Best Submission by a Graduate Student

Genetic Influences and Vascular Health Moderate MCI Status and Stability: Evidence from the VLS

Sarah Brager

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 41st Annual Meeting
Waikoloa, Hawaii, USA – February 6-9, 2013

Gershon Spitz

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2012 Mid-Year Meeting
Oslo, Norway – June 27-30, 2012

Lisanne Jenkins

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 40th Annual Meeting
Montreal, Quebec, Canada – February 15-18, 2012

David Tuck

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2011 Mid-Year Meeting
Auckland, New Zealand – July 6-9, 2011

Andrea Weinstein

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 39th Annual Meeting
Boston, Massachusetts, USA – February 2-5, 2011

Caroline Nadebaum

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2010 Mid-Year Meeting
Krakow, Poland – June 30-3, 2010

Chad Johnson

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 38th Annual Meeting
Acapulco, Mexico – February 3-6, 2010

Annika Hultén

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2009 Mid-Year Meeting
Helsinki, Finland and Tallinn, Estonia – July 29-1, 2009

Kimberly Rogers

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2008 Mid-Year Meeting
Buenos Aires, Argentina – July 2-5, 2008

Peter J. Molfese

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 36th Annual Meeting
Waikoloa, Hawaii, USA – February 6-9, 2008

Cristina Sole

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2007 Mid-Year Meeting
Bilbao, Spain – July 4-7, 2007

Jessica Fish

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2006 Mid-Year Meeting
Zurich, Switzerland – July 26-29, 2006

Fiadhnait O’Keeffe

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2005 Mid-Year Meeting
Dublin, Ireland – July 6-9, 2005

Katya Rascovsky

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 2003 Mid-Year Meeting
Berlin, Germany – July 16-20, 2003

Eva Jansiewicz

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 31st Annual Meeting
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA – February 5-8, 2003

N. Chaytor

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 30th Annual Meeting
Toronto, Canada – February 13-16, 2002

K.I. Taylor

Graduate Student Research Award Recipient

INS 1998 Mid-Year Meeting
Budapest, Hungary – July 8-11, 1998