Jessica Verpeut

Jessica Verpeut is an Assistant Professor of behavioral neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on the brain and behavior in rodent models during early-development, adolescence and into aging. Using machine learning, this neuroscience lab quantitatively analyses behavior and develops assays to understand how animals learn social dynamics. These techniques are applied to a wide variety of questions in the lab focusing on the cerebellum, addiction, and aging.

The cerebellum has highly conserved neural architecture and circuitry with distal connections to known motor, cognitive, and social regions. Pediatric injury of the cerebellum is highly associated with neural developmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Understanding how the cerebellum fine-tunes neural development is essential to providing better diagnostic criteria and outcomes for individuals with neural developmental disorders. In addition, the Verpeut lab studies the brain in aging and addiction. How the brain changes from early-development through aging is important for understanding periods of vulnerability for risk and addictive-related behavior.

Dr. Verpeut received her undergraduate degree in animal science and psychology from Pennsylvania State University and her doctoral degree in endocrinology and animal biosciences at Rutgers University. As a postdoctoral research fellow funded by the New Jersey Brain Injury Research Committee, Jessica mapped cerebello-cortical connections that contribute to flexible behavior.