Chaitali Anand, PhD

I joined the Chaumeil lab in October 2020 as a postdoc with a joint appointment in the Raj lab.  

I received my PhD in Translational Neuroscience from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, in August 2020. My research focused on investigating age differences in hippocampal glutamate modulation in healthy humans while they performed an associative memory task, with proton magnetic resonance spectra being continuously acquired from unilateral hippocampi. The overarching goal of the study was to assess if glutamate modulation could be a potential biomarker of impending deficits in memory formation. I showed that, compared to the young, older adults demonstrate weak, to almost absent, modulation of hippocampal glutamate specifically during memory encoding, i.e. memory formation; and this was related to their poorer performance on the memory task. I was awarded an NRSA F31 predoctoral fellowship by the NIA (NIH) to conduct this work.

My research interest lies in exploring normal and pathological age-related changes in neuro-energetics and neurometabolism. I am also interested in learning and applying computational approaches to model neurodegenerative disease progression. Outside of lab, I am interested in running while listening to podcasts, hiking, photography, painting, and playing badminton.