Jefferson Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute continues to grow and thrive, and we are pleased to welcome Andrew Persichetti, PhD, to the Institute. He will be joining us as Director of the Memory and Perception (MAP) Lab.
Dr. Persichetti received his PhD from Emory University under the mentorship of Daniel Dilks, PhD. His PhD work focused on how people recognize places and navigate within and between them. In his dissertation, Dr. Persichetti used data from several neuroimaging and behavioral experiments to demonstrate that recognizing places and navigating through them are distinct cognitive functions supported by dissociable neural systems.
After receiving his PhD, Dr. Persichetti accepted a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Section on Cognitive Neuropsychology within the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institute of Mental Health. Under the supervision of Alex Martin, PhD, his work focused on how knowledge about the world is represented in the human mind and brain. In addition to his theoretical work, Dr. Persichetti also worked on advancing fMRI methods so we can better characterize individual differences in functional brain networks and noninvasively measure brain responses in humans that are closer to the single-neuron measurements achieved in animal models. For example, Dr. Persichetti was awarded a K99/R00 grant from the National Eye Institute to support his work using high-resolution fMRI methods to probe cortical layers in the human brain.
Now, as the Director of the Memory and Perception Lab at our Institute, Dr. Persichetti will continue his basic science research with an eye toward informing rehabilitation efforts in individuals with different types of topographical disorientation, agnosia, and aphasia due to stroke or neurodegenerative disease.
We are excited to welcome Dr. Persichetti to our team!