Deirdre O’Shea, M.S.

Deirdre M. O’Shea, MS, received her Bachelor of Arts (Sociology and Psychology) from University College Cork in Ireland and her Master of Science (Cognitive Neuropsychology) from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Her master’s thesis examined the relationship between age-sensitive cognitive abilities (i.e., abstract reasoning and speed of processing), and sustained attention in older adults. Following graduation from her Master’s degree she worked as a research assistant for Dr. Yaakov Stern at the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. There she worked on two intervention studies investigating the effects of aerobic exercise and cognitive training on cognitive function in young and older adults. She was also responsible for the preprocessing of structural neuroimaging scans using FreeSurfer across all studies. She entered the Clinical and Health Psychology program at the University of Florida in the fall of 2015, where she is pursuing the concentration in Clinical Neuropsychology. Broadly, Deirdre is interested in the identification of risk and resilience factors as predictors of cognitive impairment and decline related to dementia using neuropsychological measures and neuroimaging techniques.