Dr. Anderson received her MS degree in psychology from Emporia State University, and her PhD in biological psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is interested in the influence of the environment and lifestyle on neural connections. Her research is designed to test whether learning, exercise, or stress can alter synapse numbers, regional volume, and metabolic capacity. She is also interested in environmental control over neuronal vulnerability to metabolic challenges. She uses animal models to explore causality between variables shown to be related in humans. Dr. Anderson's research relies on anatomical methodologies that span the subcellular to regional levels of analysis.