Rebecca Spencer, Ph.D.
Dr. Spencer (cognaclab.com) is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Behavior Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Purdue University where her doctoral work focused on the neural control of movement particularly in healthy individuals and individuals with cerebellar ataxias. In her post-doctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, her research focused on cerebellar function in motor and cognitive learning paradigms using patient and functional neuroimaging models. In addition to continuing this line of research, her lab at UMass investigates how sleep modulates various forms of learning and how this sleep function varies across the lifespan and in diseases that effect sleep such as ataxia, Parkinson and Alzheimer diseases.
