UCF Hosts The Florida Consortium on the Neurobiology of Cognition for the First Time
The Psychology Department at the College of Sciences convenes researchers across the state to explore issues around cognition and aging.
By: Sultana Ali and Jordan Sammarco | May 20, 2025
Researchers from across the Florida university system, as well as other organizations connected to cognition, gathered at the University of Central Florida May 8 and 9 to discuss the latest research in the field and exchange ideas and advancements in neuroscience.
The Florida Consortium on the Neurobiology of Cognition (FCNC) is an annual convening that provides opportunities for Florida researchers at all stages of their career to present their work. The overall aim of FCNC is to discover the fundamental brain mechanisms for cognition, which has the potential to transform education, technology, and brain health across the lifespan.
Winston V. Schoenfeld, Ph.D., Vice President for Research and Innovation, and Professor of Optics, MSE, and ECE at UCF, provided welcoming remarks for the room and Nichole Lighthall, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology and Associate Director of the Ph.D. Program in Human Factors and Cognitive Psychology at UCF gave introductory remarks and co-chaired the event along with faculty members from Florida State University, Carmen Varela and Justin Riddle.
“We are excited to host this incredibly important annual consortium here at our UCF campus for the first time,” says Lighthall. “It’s a unique opportunity to gather and meet new people as well as reconnect with colleagues you may not have seen in awhile. Importantly, it’s a chance to learn about new discoveries and see what’s possible in the neurobiology of cognition. Thanks so much to everyone for being here to be a part of this event.”
This year, FCNC featured a distinguished lecture from Carol Barnes, Regents’ Professor, Psychology, Neurology and Neuroscience and Evelyn F. McKnight Chair for Learning and Memory in Aging at the University of Arizona. Dr. Barnes’s accolades include her selection as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.
One of the key insights from her neuroscience research studying primates and rodents is that aging is not a disease.
“What we were struck by was how much consistency and general correspondence there was across species in the fundamental patterns of preservation or vulnerability in the hippocampus,” says Barnes. “This surprised us given the wide range of life expectancies and exposures across species.”
Other points she touched on in her keynote speech are the importance of glia in synaptic health and that the timing of synaptic activity is critical for strengthening connections within the brain, a pattern she observed in her research.
“It’s obvious that the solutions for optimizing cognition at older ages are going to be complex, and synapse/region-specific,” says Barnes. “The challenge for the future is to discover how to optimize cognitive recall across the lifespan. We can and we do observe the possibility of extreme resilience, like in supercentenarians. But we also observe vulnerability for those on the trajectory towards dementia. For those of us who work in the field, we have many ideas to discover the underlying mechanisms that drive extreme differences in aging trajectories.”
Over the course of two days, the FCNC program included five sessions of panel speakers featuring researchers from Florida universities on topics of aging and cognition. The consortium also included a panel of funding sponsors from NIH and the Alzheimer’s Association, as well as data blitz and poster sessions that provided research trainees with a forum to discuss their findings and make connections with others in the field. Over 60 research trainees presented their work at this event, including many UCF students across the College of Sciences, College of Medicine, and the College of Health Professions and Sciences.