My research examines individual differences in cognitive aging, with a focus on why cognitive abilities vary across older adults. I use structural and functional MRI to quantify variability in brain organization associated with executive function and memory. I am also interested in early cerebrovascular and metabolic biomarkers that may precede macrostructural change and help explain heterogeneity in cognitive outcomes.
I am a doctoral candidate in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Iowa, working in Dr. Michelle Voss's Health, Brain & Cognition Lab. My dissertation investigates how the morphology of the posterior middle frontal sulci (pmfs) -- a subtle but functionally important cortical landmark -- relates to executive function and the spatial boundaries of large-scale resting-state networks in older adults.
My work spans structural neuroimaging, task-based fMRI, resting-state network analysis, and behavioral cognitive testing, drawing on the EXTEND dataset. Before graduate school, I worked as an EMT, primarily with older adults -- an experience that has given enduring human grounding to questions I now pursue statistically.
Full record on ORCID.
Complete record of publications, presentations, teaching, and funding history.
Outside of research I build things, stay active, and find ways to apply the same systematic thinking from my science to completely different problems.
A constraint-based scheduling app for competitive dance studios. Built to solve a real problem -- scheduling 200+ classes, rooms, and instructors by hand was taking weeks. This does it in seconds.
A personal research library tool for organizing large citation libraries. Features D3 topic cluster visualizations, keyword co-occurrence networks, and a local LLM similarity pipeline.
Photo collage coming soon -- conferences, travel, and everything in between.
I welcome correspondence about research collaborations or questions about my work.
madero.bryan01@gmail.com