By Office of Media Relations • Dec. 4, 2012

Dr. Kristen Kennedy is looking to the brain’s white matter for clues about how the brain changes as we age and why some people are able to maintain good cognitive health while others are not.

Nearly half the human brain is white matter, which consists of millions of bundles of nerve fibers that connect neurons in different brain regions into functional circuits.

Kennedy joined the UT Dallas faculty this year as an assistant professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) and UT Dallas’ Center for Vital Longevity.

“White matter loses integrity as we age, but the brain is also really good at compensating for this,” said Kennedy. “Structural losses don’t necessarily translate to loss of brain function, which suggests that the aging brain is malleable and able to adapt in response to lost or weak neural connections.”

Kennedy began her career with a clinical focus, earning a master’s degree in clinical neuropsychology from Emporia State University in Kansas and her PhD in psychology from Wayne State University in Michigan. Her early studies used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as a tool to investigate age-related changes to the structure of the brain, and she quickly gravitated to the idea of using multimodal brain-imaging tools to examine the healthy brain structure’s role in how brain function changes over the lifespan…