Tammy Thanh Tran

Assistant Professor

Education

Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology, Johns Hopkins University

B.S. in Psychology, the University of Texas at Austin

Research Interests

Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroimaging, Memory, Spatial Navigation, Spatial Memory, Aging, Alzheimer’s Disease, biomarkers

About

Tammy Tran, Ph.D. earned her B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin and completed her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine under the mentorship of Drs. Michela Gallagher and Arnold Bakker. She completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford University School of Medicine under the direction of Drs. Anthony Wagner and Elizabeth Mormino.

Her research program broadly examines the mechanisms that drive memory variability across the lifespan, with an emphasis on real-world contributors such as spatial context, stress, and attention. She focuses on how spatial representations and episodic memory are intertwined to guide encoding and retrieval processes. To investigate these dynamics, the lab employs a multimodal approach combining functional and structural neuroimaging, web-based behavioral paradigms, and immersive virtual reality in young adults and older adults. 

She will not be accepting applications for PhD students, master’s students and research coordinators for this upcoming cycle (2027-2028). 

See the lab website here. 

Selected Publications

Tran, T. T., Madore, K. P., Tobin, K. E., Block, S. H., Puliyadi, V., Hsu, S. C., ... & Wagner, A. D. (2025). Age-Related differences in the relationship between sustained attention and associative memory and Memory-Guided inference. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 25(4), 1001-1021.

Tran, T. T., Speck, C. L., Gallagher, M., & Bakker, A. (2022). Lateral entorhinal cortex dysfunction in amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Neurobiology of aging, 112, 151-160.

Trelle, A.N., Carr, V.A., Wilson, E.N., Swarovski, M.S., Hunt, M.P, Toueg, T.N., Tran, T.T., Channappa, D., Corso, N.K., Thieu M.K., Jayakumar, M., Nadiadwala, A., Guo, A., Tanner, N.J., Bernstein, J.D., Litovsky, C.P., Guerin, S.A., Khazenzon, A.M., Harrison, M.B., Rutt, B.K., Deutsch, G.K., Chin, F.T., Davidzon, G.A., Hall, J.N., Sha, S.J., Fredericks, C.A., Andreasson, K.I., Kerchner, G.A., Wagner, A.D., Mormino, E.C. (2022). Association of CSF biomarkers with hippocampal-dependent memory in preclinical Alzheimer disease. Neurology.

Tran, T., Tobin, K. E., Block, S. H., Puliyadi, V., Gallagher, M., & Bakker, A. (2021). Effect of aging differs for memory of object identity and object position within a spatial context. Learning & Memory, 28(7), 239-247.

Tran, T.T., Speck, C., Pisupati, A., Gallagher, M., Bakker, A. (2017). Increased hippocampal activation in ApoE-4 carriers and non-carriers with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment. NeuroImage: Clinical, 13, 237-245.