In Professor Roee Holtzer’s Lab, Mentorship and Innovative Research Foster Impressive Student Publications Jennifer Yuan, a doctoral candidate in Yeshiva University’s Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, recently published an article about her pre-doctoral research as a first author in Human Brain Mapping, a high-impact peer-reviewed scientific journal. It’s a rare and significant achievement for a student in a PhD program—but in Yuan’s case, as a researcher in Dr. Roee Holtzer’s Neuropsychology and Cognition Lab, she’s actually in good company.

From left: Melissa Shuman-Paretsky, Janna Belser-Ehrlich, Jennifer Yuan, Elyssa Scharaga and Sarah England

Over the course of the last academic year, four of Holtzer’s doctoral students—Yuan, Sarah England, Janna Belser-Ehrlich and Elyssa Scharaga—and one recent alumna—Melissa Shuman-Paretsky—were listed as first-authors on articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. “Our students consistently achieve high clinical competence levels, as evidenced by our higher than 90 percent match rate for competitive yearlong clinical internships around the country,” said Holtzer, professor of psychology and neurology at Ferkauf and director of its PhD program in clinical psychology with a health emphasis. “But to have this number of students publishing first-authored empirical studies in peer-reviewed journals constitutes a major accomplishment for our doctoral students.” Holtzer’s group seeks to identify cognitive, psychological and brain mechanisms of major public health concerns in populations struggling with aging, dementia and diseases that influence the central nervous system. As they explore the frontiers of neuropsychology and cognition, students also receive close mentorship and guidance from Holtzer that enables them to dive deep into their own areas of interest. “Part of my role is to identify the student’s strengths and research interests, developing the right project together with the student,” said Holtzer. “My laboratory benefits from interdisciplinary collaboration with colleagues who also contribute to the research mentorship of our students.” Yuan’s article,“Functional Connectivity Associated With Gait Velocity During Walking and Walking-While-Talking in Aging: A Resting-State fMRI Study,” was the first study to use resting-state fMRI, a method of functional brain imaging that can be used to evaluate activity in the brain when the person is not performing a specific task, to examine neural correlates of gait performance. Her research allows for a new perspective into the connectivity of brain networks at rest and their relation to mobility. She says Holtzer’s mentorship has been key. “Dr. Holtzer has been both an outstanding adviser and supporter,” she said. “As an experienced researcher in the field, he is well able to guide our projects and share knowledge, but just as importantly, he encourages and challenges students to develop their own independence. As a young clinician and researcher, having an inspiring, innovative network of students and faculty at Ferkauf has made a world of difference.” Belser-Ehrlich felt her research, which studies fatigue as a significant and debilitating symptom often related to disease, loss of functionality or other negative outcomes, benefited from the unparalleled training opportunities Ferkauf students can draw on in the metro New York City area and the varied makeup of Holtzer’s lab. “Our integrated division of Cognitive and Motor Aging and Geriatrics brings together a diverse group of people who are committed to understanding cognitive and motor changing in aging,” she said. “The breadth of past experiences, knowledge bases and point-of-views available to me on this team have allowed me to grow and develop as a researcher as well as a clinician.” Belser-Ehrlich and Shuman-Paretsky were first authors together on the article “Psychometric Properties of the Brief Fatigue Inventory in Community-Dwelling Older Adults,” published in the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, which validated a subjective measure of fatigue that could be used when studying community-dwelling older adults.  This study extended findings from previous self-report inventories of fatigue in older adults by establishing its relationship with important functional, cognitive, and health outcomes.   The study related closely to Shuman-Paretsky’s pre-doctoral and dissertation research, which focuses on subjective and objective measures of cognitive to fatigue. According to Shuman-Paretsky, her most interesting discovery while performing the research was an accidental one. “My results started to get less significant with more participants, which clearly did not make sense,” she recalled. “Dr. Holtzer noticed from the descriptive statistics that our population was bi-modal: there were two sets of subjects, those who experienced cognitive fatigue and those who did not. From that point on, I started exploring some of the underlying psychological causes for these differences, such as variations in motivation, boredom and mental effort. For my dissertation, I created an inventory that captured these constructs.” Shuman-Paretsky was drawn to the Health Emphasis PhD program for its dual focus on the role of psychologists as researchers and clinicians, the opportunity to study with experts in the field, and the program’s unique neuropsychology minor. It was a move that jumpstarted her career. “An increasing number of students have been chosen for the top neuropsychology practicums and APA-accredited internships both locally and nationally,” she said. “I was able to match at my first choice—the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Department of Rehabilitation—for both internship and post-doc. On interviews and at neuropsychology conferences, people were quite impressed to know that Dr. Holtzer was my adviser and expressed interest in working with me because of that connection.” England was already a trained silversmith working for a designer when she decided to apply to Ferkauf’s PhD program after becoming fascinated with the connection between the mind and the body. She found the impact of brain injury and neurodegenerative diseases—a common side effect of simply getting older which is studied in Holtzer’s lab—particularly intriguing. “I want to understand the mind-body connection better so I can help the greater population, which is aging,” said England, who now hopes to become a neuropsychologist. “I believe it is important to consider all aspects of an individual’s health when you are working with them, and this program does that—nothing works in isolation. Ferkauf’s PhD program trains students to be good clinicians by teaching you about the relationship between physical and mental health, how to research it and then how to apply the research to your patients.” Her research—“Three-level rating of turns while walking,” published in Gait & Posture—focuses on mobility in the elderly, particularly the differences between when study participants reported entering a turn while walking versus when computer software detected them entering a turn. “We found participants in our study thought they exited turns earlier than our algorithm and clinical rater perceived them to, which could have implications for why so many elderly individuals fall while making turns,” said England. For Scharaga, first author on the article “Preliminary Findings of The Brief Everyday Activities Measurement (BEAM) in Older Adults,” published in the Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging, the decision to study functional abilities and the effect of aging on cognitive functioning in Holtzer’s lab was personal. “Being a caregiver for family members with neurological disorders made me interested in treating and conducting research in the field of neuropsychology, specifically in older adults,” she said. “Dr. Holtzer’s research on the relationship between mobility and cognition in healthy aging has provided me the ability to expand my knowledge of neuroanatomy and neurological diseases specific to the geriatric population. Training in Dr. Holtzer’s lab has given me firsthand experience working within a collaborative interdisciplinary team. This has proven to be invaluable as I progress in my doctoral training and begin to start my path as a clinical neuropsychologist.” For his part, Holtzer is extremely proud of his students’ publications. “It is a pleasure to mentor and to observe the students’ growth and professional development,” he said. “It is important to recognize, though, that while these articles are impressive, other studies that have been first-authored by recent alumni of the lab or our current students are still being published or submitted for publication—it’s a continuous process.”