Cheshire Hardcastle, a graduate student in lab of Dr. Adam Woods, earned the Dissertation Research Award, sponsored by the Science Directorate of the American Psychological Association. The purpose of this award is to sponsor science-oriented psychology graduate students in completion of their dissertation research. Cheshire’s dissertation studies the higher-order resting state network changes associated with a common task utilized in cognitive training interventions, the Useful Field of View task. Her dissertation will also assess moderating factors of cognitive training gains in healthy older adults. She hopes that findings from her dissertation will help refine cognitive training approaches to boost cognitive training gains.
In addition to the award, Hardcastle has been selected to give an oral presentation of her dissertation findings at the International Neuropsychological Society conference in New Orleans in February 2022. Cheshire will be presenting on the relationship between higher-order resting state network changes that accompany Useful Field of View task change after 3 months of multidomain cognitive training in healthy older adults. Her results show that increased frontoparietal control network connectivity, a network of executive functioning and internetwork modulation, is associated with improved Useful Field of View performance after cognitive training.
Hardcastle has also been asked to give an oral presentation at Alzheimer’s Disease/Parkinson’s Disease (AD/PD) conference in Barcelona, Spain in March 2022. She will be presenting on higher-order resting state network changes after cognitive training interventions in healthy older adults. Her findings show that connectivity of the frontoparietal control network, a resting state brain network involved in executive functioning and inter network modulation, increases after a 3-month multidomain cognitive training intervention and this increased connectivity maintains at one-year follow-up timepoint.