Sophie Bell

LIFE Fellow since 2024, University of Virginia

I am a third year PhD student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Virginia working with Eric Turkheimer. I earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and pursued certificates in Neuroscience and Human Development at Duke University. Broadly, I am interested in integrating behavioral genetics with lifespan longitudinal data to understand how early-life exposures shape trajectories of healthy and pathological aging. In my graduate research, I have examined relationships between childhood socioeconomic status, epigenetic aging, and cognitive decline using genetically informed twin models in the Louisville Twin Study. In my dissertation work, I hope to incorporate risk and protective factors across multiple domains (e.g., genetic, epigenetic, cognitive and physiological health) into a tool that quantifies risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

Selected Publications

Kim, H., Zhu, X., Zhao, Y., Bell, S. A., Gehrman, P. R., Cohen, D., Devanand, D. P., Goldberg, T. E., & Lee, S. (2023). Resting-state functional connectivity changes in older adults with sleep disturbance and the role of amyloid burden. Molecular Psychiatry, 28, 4399–4406. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-023-02214-9

Bell, S. A., Cohen, H.R., Lee, S., Kim, H., Ciarleglio, A., Andrews, H., Rivera, A.M., Igwe, K., Brickman, A.M., Devanand, D. P., Harvey, P. D., Schneider, L. S., Goldberg, T. E. (2021). Development of novel measures for Alzheimer's disease prevention trials (NoMAD). Contemporary Clinical Trials, 106, Article 106425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cct.2021.106425