Position:
Doctoral Student
Communication Sciences and Disorders
Northwestern University
fitzmorris@u.northwestern.edu
Education:
Ph.D. Communication Sciences and Disorders
Northwestern University
anticipated 2017
B.S. Neuroscience, German minor
University of California Los Angeles
2008
Research Interests:
Stroke in the language-dominant hemisphere can result in a language impairment called aphasia. For many, aphasia is a lifelong diagnosis, but insurance policies typically cover only 6-12 months of language therapy. Clinicians need robust prognostic tools that can help them make accurate, individualized treatment recommendations to their aphasic clients. To this end, I study neurophysiological mechanisms of language recovery in chronic stroke, with the goal of using MRI to longitudinally predict patterns of recovery. I am currently investigating cerebral hemodynamics measured by arterial spin labeling MRI as a potential biomarker of recovery.
I also am interested in the neural correlates of sentence processing in healthy and aphasic individuals. I am currently examining areas of brain damage (i.e., hypometabolism, necrosis, atrophy) associated with syntactic impairments in Primary Progressive Aphasia and stroke-induced agrammatic aphasia.
Publications:
Mack, Meltzer-Asscher, Barbieri, Fitzmorris, & Thompson (2013). Neural correlates of processing unaccusative verbs. Poster session presented at the 19th Annual Conference of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping; 2013 Jun 16-20, Seattle, WA.
Fitzmorris, Meera, Uusi-Oukari, Ponnusamy, Fanselow, Olsen, Otis, & Wallner. Molecular basis of behavioral and biochemical selectivity for delta subunit-containing GABAa receptors. Poster session presented at the 40th Annual Conference of the Society for Neuroscience; 2010 Jun 13-17, San Diego, CA.