Education

Ph.D. (1998) Psychobiology & Clinical Neuropsychology, University of Western Ontario

Research Interests

My area of expertise is in the cognitive neuroscience of aging. My specialties include the application of functional and structural neuroimaging methods to understand cognitive and brain aging as well as behavioral endocrinology. I have devoted much of my career to the study of the effects of steroid hormones on behavior and brain function. Among my contributions to this field are studies assessing the effect of gonadal steroids on spatial cognition, hemispheric asymmetry and interhemispheric communication. Most recently my work has focused on the cognitive and neurological actions of stress and cortisol in elderly humans. I have been at the forefront of developing and using virtual environment technology to assess spatial memory in elderly individuals and have completed numerous behavioral and functional/structural neuroimaging studies investigating the effects of age on the neural systems supporting human spatial memory. I am pleased to contribute our recently analyzed cortisol samples from the BLSA cohort and to join Dr. Levy’s research team for the exciting interdisciplinary proposed study.

Selected Publications

Ennis G.E., An Y., Resnick S.M., Ferrucci L., O'Brien R.J., Moffat S.D.  (2017) Long-term cortisol measures predict Alzheimer disease risk, (2017) Neurology, 88 (4) , pp. 371-378.

Lester AW1, Moffat SD2, Wiener JM3, Barnes CA4, Wolbers T. The Aging Navigational System. Neuron. 2017 Aug 30;95(5):1019-1035. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.06.037.