Dr. Zimmerman is the director of the Neuropsychology Laboratory. She is a licensed clinical neuropsychologist who enjoys engaging in a wide-range of research, teaching, and clinical practice activities. Her research interests explore the many ways in which cognitive abilities interact with medical conditions such as insomnia, sleep apnea, dementia, and sports-related traumatic brain injury. Much of her early clinical work involved diagnosis of dementia syndromes and she has maintained that interest in her research investigations that seek early predictors of age-associated cognitive decline.
She also has a longstanding interest in sleep disorders and the complex relationships between sleep, cognition, and mood. An emerging interest has been the impact of light exposure, particularly blue light, on sleep and cognitive abilities in younger adults. And finally, she has focused on the impact of so-called subconcussive events sustained during normal sports play, such as heading of the ball in soccer, on measures of cognitive function and brain structure and function.