Patrizia Vannini, PhD.

Patrizia Vannnini is a cognitive neuroscientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School. She is also a teaching advisor at the Grants Review and Support Program at the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center, Harvard Catalyst.

Her work focuses on the use of multimodal neuroimaging to differentiate healthy brain aging from the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). She has published in the area of normal aging and the early detection of cognitive decline, including the influence of AD pathologies amyloid pathology (such as amyloid, tau and microstructural changes) on memory function. One of her current research questions involves identifying the neural underpinnings of memory self-awareness and the progressive dysfunction of these systems that underlies the loss of self-awareness (anosognosia) with AD progression.

Through her lecturing (at a local, regional, and national level), her written works (e.g., peer-reviewed original research, topical review of the literature, and upcoming e-book), her research, and her involvement with professional societies she has sought to provide critical information that may have important positive impact for patients and their families, particularly for the development and use of dementia management interventions and patient care. Her work is funded by the NIH.