Dr. Thompson is the Associate Director of Research and a licensed clinical neuropsychologist in the Memory and Aging Program at Butler Hospital. She completed her doctoral degree in clinical psychology, with an emphasis in neuropsychology, at the City University of New York (CUNY) and her residency training at the University of California San Diego with a focus on older adults. She first came to Brown University to complete a research fellowship in the Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium before joining the Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior faculty in 2019.
Dr. Thompson's research goal is to improve Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) health outcomes through the use of multi-pronged methods of early detection and diagnosis to facilitate timely access to treatment and support for patients and families.
Her studies investigate the use of smartphone apps and other novel digital tools to improve cognitive screening in older adult populations. She has published on the feasibility, reliability, and validity of using remote, high frequency smartphone assessments in cognitively healthy older adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Additionally, she has done validation work on the use of digitized clock drawing tasks (dCDT) to detect AD susceptibility biomarkers and mild cognitive impairment in older adults.
Dr. Thompson's current research is funded by a K23 grant from the National Institute on Aging and Advance-CTR (IDeA-CTR/NIGMS) pilot funds and seeks to establish digital cognitive screening approaches for primary care. A major focus of this work is maximizing sensitivity to detect subtle cognitive and neuropathological changes associated with AD in ethnoculturally and socioeconomically diverse older adults.
Dr. Thompson is also an active collaborator on several R01 studies investigating additional cost-effective and minimally-invasive methods for the early detection of ADRD, including the use of retinal imaging and plasma biomarkers.
