Theresa A. Jones

Last updated
Theresa A. Jones
Born (1964-11-01) November 1, 1964 (age 58)
Pine Bluff, Arkansas, United States
Citizenship United States
Alma mater University of Missouri University of Texas at Austin
Scientific career
Fields Psychology,

Biopsychology,

Behavioral Neuroscience
Institutions
University of Texas at Austin
Doctoral advisors Timothy Schallert William Greenough
Website homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/Jones/JonesBio/jones.html

Theresa A. Jones is a researcher and professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the Institute for Neuroscience. [1] Her interests are in neural plasticity across the lifespan, motor skill learning, mechanisms of brain and behavioral adaptation to brain damage, and glial-neuronal interactions. [2] Her research is on the brain changes following stroke, in particular rehabilitation strategies and the brain changes associated with them. She primarily tests rats and uses the Endothelin-1 stroke model. Her most recent work has expanded into the field of microstimulation mapping of the rat cortex. [3]

Contents

Early life and education

Theresa Jones was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas on November 1, 1964. Throughout her childhood, her family moved around to Little Rock, Arkansas, Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, and St. Louis Missouri. She went to school as an undergraduate student at the University of Missouri. [4] She began studying towards a major in general humanities, but she quickly found interest in the biological aspect of psychology. After leaving the University of Missouri in 1986, she went on to finish her Bachelor's degree in Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin in 1987. [4] Theresa Jones enrolled in a graduate Biopsychology program at the University of Texas at Austin under the mentorship of Timothy Schallert. [4] She received her doctoral degree in 1992 for her research on neural plasticity mechanisms of recovery after brain injury. [4] Wanting to continue her studies in brain plasticity, she became a postdoctoral fellow in Behavioral Neuroscience and Biopsychology at the Beckman Institute of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the supervision of William Greenough until 1996. [4]

Career and research

Theresa Jones became an assistant professor in the Psychology Department and Neurobiology and Behavior Program at the University of Washington in 1996. [4] In 2001, she moved to an assistant professor position at her alma mater, in the Psychology Department and Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin. [4] After two years as an assistant professor, Theresa Jones was promoted to an associate professor position for five years, then a full professor in 2008. [4] The following year, she received the UT faculty position of Behavioral Neuroscience Area Head. [4] She spent a year as a Bergeron visiting professor in the Center for Brain Plasticity and Behavior at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. from 2013 to 2014. [4] Theresa Jones then returned to the University of Texas at Austin to continue her research and teaching. [4]

The courses that she teaches include Biopsychology, Neural Plasticity and Behavior, Quantifying Brain Structure, and Honors Research. [1] Her laboratory studies the plasticity of neural structure and synaptic connectivity in adult animals following brain damage during skill learning. [5] The lab has focused on three main questions: how the brain changes in response to altered behavioral experience, how the brain changes in adaptation to injury, and how behavioral experiences influence brain adaptation to injury. [6] [7]

Theresa Jones has published upwards of 80 peer-reviewed papers on these subjects, several of which have been cited over 100 times. The first was published in 1990 and the most recent in 2015. [1] [4] [5] Additionally, she authored 10 book chapters and reviews between 1992 and 2013. [4]

The most cited of her peer-reviewed journal publications include:

Theresa Jones has submitted over 100 conference proceedings abstracts, several of which have been peer reviewed. [4] Additionally, she was invited to about 65 external lectures and symposia to present her research and work. [4]

Awards and honors

Theresa Jones has been awarded research funding for numerous research initiatives from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health. Some of these include "Cortical Stimulation to Enhance Experience-Dependent Plasticity After Stroke", "Cognitive Neurorehabilitation to Enhance Recovery After Stroke", "Neural Plasticity and Neurorehabilitation Following Traumatic Brain Injury", and "Cortical Stimulation to Enhance Recovery After Stroke". [4] The most recent research topics for which she has been awarded funding include "Neural Mechanisms of Compensating for Brain Damage", "Neurovascular Mechanisms of Time-Dependencies in Stroke Rehabilitation", "Microscale Oxygenation Mapping During Stroke", "Optical Imaging of Baseline Blood Flow and Oxygen During Stroke", and "Cortical Stimulation to Enhance Motor Recovery Following Traumatic Brain Injury". [4] [8]

As a postdoctoral fellow, Theresa Jones was honored with the Donal B. Lindsley Award in Behavioral Neuroscience in 1993. [4] She was among the Top 10 Great Dissertations awarded by the American Psychological Science in 2004. [4] In 2006, she was named both a Raymond Dickson Centennial Teaching Fellow and an American Psychological Association Fellow. [4] Theresa received the President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award in 2012 for her work at the University of Texas at Austin. [4] In 2013, she was named an Association for Psychological Science Fellow. Most recently, Theresa Jones was honored with the Harry Ransom Award for Teaching Excellence in 2014. [4]

Theresa Jones is a member of numerous regional and national level committees such as the NIH Clinical Neuroscience and Disease and Acute Neural Injury and Epilepsy study sections, LoneStar Preclinical Stroke Consortium, and APA Committee on Animal Research and Ethics. [4] She also has numerous positions on departmental and university committees such as the Psychology Department Executive Committee, Behavioral Neuroscience Search Committee, and Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. [4]

Related Research Articles

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to neuroscience:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Behavioral neuroscience</span> Field of study

Behavioral neuroscience, also known as biological psychology, biopsychology, or psychobiology, is the application of the principles of biology to the study of physiological, genetic, and developmental mechanisms of behavior in humans and other animals.

Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It is when the brain is rewired to function in some way that differs from how it previously functioned. These changes range from individual neuron pathways making new connections, to systematic adjustments like cortical remapping or neural oscillation. Other forms of neuroplasticity include homologous area adaptation, cross modal reassignment, map expansion, and compensatory masquerade. Examples of neuroplasticity include circuit and network changes that result from learning a new ability, information acquisition, environmental influences, practice, and psychological stress.

Michael Matthias Merzenich is an American neuroscientist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco. He took the sensory cortex maps developed by his predecessors and refined them using dense micro-electrode mapping techniques. Using this, he definitively showed there to be multiple somatotopic maps of the body in the postcentral sulcus, and multiple tonotopic maps of the acoustic inputs in the superior temporal plane.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aron K. Barbey</span> American cognitive neuroscientist

Aron Keith Barbey is an American cognitive neuroscientist, who investigates the neural architecture of human intelligence and brain plasticity. Barbey is the Emanuel Donchin Professorial Scholar of Psychology and a Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois. He is director of the Decision Neuroscience Laboratory at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and founding director of the Center for Brain Plasticity at the Beckman Institute, where he leads the Intelligence, Learning, and Plasticity (ILP) Initiative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frances Champagne</span> Psychologist

Frances A. Champagne is a Canadian psychologist and University Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin known for her research in the fields of molecular neuroscience, maternal behavior, and epigenetics. Research in the Champagne lab explores the developmental plasticity that occurs in response to environmental experiences. She is known for her work on the epigenetic transmission of maternal behavior. Frances Champagne's research has revealed how natural variations in maternal behavior can shape the behavioral development of offspring through epigenetic changes in gene expression in a brain region specific manner. She won the NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2007 and the Frank A. Beach Young Investigator Award in Behavioral Neuroendocrinology in 2009. She has been described as the "bee's knees of neuroscience". She serves on the Committee on Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development Among Children and Youth in the United States.

Julie A. Fiez is a cognitive neuroscientist known for her research on the neural basis of speech, language, reading, working memory, and learning in healthy and patient populations. She is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the Learning Research and Development Center and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at the University of Pittsburgh. She is also Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University.

Yang Dan is a Chinese-American neuroscientist. She is the Paul Licht Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. She is a past recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, Beckman Young Investigator Award, and Society for Neuroscience Research Awards for Innovation in Neuroscience. Recognized for her research on the neural circuits that control behavior, she was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2018.

Ian Quentin Whishaw is a Canadian neuropsychologist who has contributed extensively to the understanding of cortical organization and its relation to stroke, Parkinson’s, spatial navigation, and behavior. Whishaw is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Lethbridge and has authored over 460 scientific papers and five books on neuroscience subjects that include a wide range of mammalian species... His interests include varsity football, rugby, basketball, creative writing, and dog and horse training.

Rosemary C. Bagot is a Canadian neuroscientist who researches the mechanisms of altered brain function in depression. She is an assistant professor in behavioral neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her focus in behavioral neuroscience is on understanding the mechanisms of altered brain circuit function in depression. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, Bagot investigates why only some people who experience stress become depressed.

Kristen Harris is Professor of Neuroscience and Fellow in the Center for Learning and Memory at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research group at UT Austin uses serial section electron microscopy to study synapses. She is also a member of the Institute for Neuroscience and the Center for Theoretical and Computational Learning.

Rae Silver is a Canadian behavioral neuroendocrinologist and neuroscientist best known for her research on the role of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus in generating circadian rhythms, the role of mast cells in the brain, the physiological mechanisms of parental behavior in ring doves. She is currently the Helene L. and Mark N. Kaplan Professor of Natural & Physical Sciences and is currently the Chair of the Neuroscience Program and Professor of Psychology at Barnard College. In addition, she is jointly appointed as a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University and in the Department of Pathology and Cell Biology with the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bianca Jones Marlin</span> American neuroscientist

Bianca Jones Marlin is an American neuroscientist and the Herbert and Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Cell Research at the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University in New York City. Marlin studies the epigenetic mechanisms that enable trauma experienced by parents to be passed on to offspring in rodent models. Marlin's graduate work uncovered the fundamental role for the hormone oxytocin in maternal behavior, for which she was awarded the Donald B. Lindsley Prize in Behavioral Neuroscience for Outstanding Ph.D. thesis as well as the STAT Wunderkinds Award for her groundbreaking findings.

Ilana B. Witten is an American neuroscientist and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University. Witten studies the mesolimbic pathway, with a focus on the striatal neural circuit mechanisms driving reward learning and decision making.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ila Fiete</span> American physicist

Ila Fiete is an Indian–American physicist and computational neuroscientist as well as a Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences within the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fiete builds theoretical models and analyses neural data and to uncover how neural circuits perform computations and how the brain represents and manipulates information involved in memory and reasoning.

Yael Niv is a neuroscientist who studies human and animal reinforcement learning and decision making. She is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University. Niv is known for her research contributions and for her visible advocacy work fighting against gender bias in neuroscience. Niv is founder of biaswatchneuro.com, a website that tracks statistics in an effort to combat sexism in science.

Alexander C. Huk is an American neuroscientist. Prior to moving to UCLA in 2022, he was the Raymond Dickson Centennial Professor #2 of Neuroscience and Psychology, and the Director of the Center for Perceptual Systems at The University of Texas at Austin. His laboratory studies how the brain integrates information over space and time and how these neural signals guide behavior in the natural world. He has made contributions towards understanding how the brain represents 3D visual motion and how those representations are used to make perceptual judgments

Lucina Q. Uddin is an American cognitive neuroscientist who is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research investigates the relationship between brain connectivity and cognition in typical and atypical development using network neuroscience approaches.

Sonja Hofer is a German neuroscientist studying the neural basis of sensory perception and sensory-guided decision-making at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour. Her research focuses on how the brain processes visual information, how neural networks are shaped by experience and learning, and how they integrate visual signals with other information in order to interpret the outside world and guide behaviour. She received her undergraduate degree from the Technical University of Munich, her PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany, and completed a post doctorate at the University College London. After holding an Assistant Professorship at the Biozentrum University of Basel in Switzerland for five years, she now is a group leader and Professor at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour since 2018.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "UT College of Liberal Arts". homepage.psy.utexas.edu.
  2. ↑ "UT College of Liberal Arts". www.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-14.
  3. 1 2 Jones, TA (1 April 1994). "Use-Dependent Growth Of Pyramidal Neurons After Neocortical Damage". The Journal of Neuroscience. 14 (4): 2140–2152. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.14-04-02140.1994. PMC   6577139 . PMID   8158262.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 "Curriculum Vitae, Theresa A. Jones, Ph.D." homepage.psy.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-13.
  5. 1 2 "UT College of Liberal Arts". www.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
  6. ↑ "Jones Lab - UT - Austin - Home Page". homepage.psy.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
  7. ↑ "Jones Lab - UT - Austin - Research Summary". homepage.psy.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
  8. ↑ "Jones Lab - UT - Austin - Research Funding". homepage.psy.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-14.
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