My undergraduate degree in Psychology was earned at Richard Stockton College located near the beach in Pomona, NJ. My first research experience was studying the sensory system of the fiddler crab. Although this was not a field in which I chose to continue, it led to my interests in research and understanding an organism from a systems perspective. To follow my interests in brain and behavior, I began my doctoral research under the mentorship of Dr. Victor Denenberg at the University of Connecticut. Supported by a predoctoral NRSA grant from NIMH, my doctoral research focused upon sex differences in brain morphology and function in the rodent, and how ovarian hormones affected the expression of sex differences in an activational and organizational fashion. The traditional model of sexual differentiation of the mammalian brain holds the tenet that while masculinization of the brain is an active process mediated by gonadal hormones, the female brain develops in the absence of hormone exposure. Using morphology of the corpus callosum as an endpoint, my dissertation research built upon a handful of older studies from the Denenberg and other laboratories to show that, on the contrary, ovarian hormone exposure is necessary for normal female brain development, and that the temporal parameters guiding brain feminization are markedly more flexible than the parameters guiding brain masculinization. We also performed several animal studies showing that ovarian hormones, sex, and presence of a Y chromosome (in sex-reversed mice) influence performance on specific cognitive measures. The idea that gonadal hormones could have such a profound influence on the brain and behavior was intriguing to me, and this area of work became my passion.

After earning my Ph.D. in 2000, I started my postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Ann-Charlotte Granholm at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, and several months later I helped move the laboratory to the Medical University of South Carolina. With support from a postdoctoral NRSA grant from NIA, in a series of studies we found that aged male and female rats exhibited poorer working and reference memory performance on the water radial-arm maze relative to young rats, an effect that correlated with cortical neurotrophin levels. We have also assessed other neurobiological variables in the rat and mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, and have shown that, for example, the relationship between APP and working memory depends on the age of the subject.

Soon after beginning my postdoctoral fellowship I also started investigating gonadal hormone effects on cognition and neurotrophins during aging in the rodent. Together, our initial and our current findings have shown that not only does testosterone influence cognition and neurotrophins during aging in males, but estrogen and progesterone have divergent effects on memory and neurotrophins in aging females. We also have newer data suggesting that the memory effects of ovarian hormone loss and replacement depend on age. These complex interactive relationships between hormones, aging, and memory are a large thrust of our current work here at ASU, which began when the Bimonte-Nelson Memory and Aging Laboratory was initiated in June of 2005. We are also interested in non-pharmacological approaches to protecting the brain and cognition against age-related change. Our recent work is funded by grants from the Alzheimer's Disease Research Consortium (Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center), the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute (University of Arizona, in collaboration with TGEN), and two RO3 grants from NIA. When I am not in the laboratory or teaching, I enjoy the beautiful Arizona atmosphere by spending time outdoors with my husband, Matt, and our two young daughters, Hailey and Brooke. I also enjoy crafts, concerts and writing short stories.