Fiona Harrison
Dr Harrison attended University in Cardiff, Wales where she received a B.Sc in Psychology and then completed her Ph.D in Behavioral Neuroscience with a thesis related to animal models of Alzheimer’s disease. She moved to the USA in 2004 and has been at Vanderbilt ever since, first as a post doc and now as faculty. Current research interests revolve around the function of vitamin C in the brain during prenatal development and also during neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. It is possible to survive in a relatively healthy state with low levels of vitamin C and not develop scurvy but maximal brain health requires much greater vitamin C intake, which can be derived from food or dietary supplements.
Using a number of different mouse models the Harrison Lab examines learning and memory and motor ability using a wide range of behavioral tasks. For example, mice that developed under low vitamin C conditions have poorer motor abilities than those that developed in adequately supplemented pregnancies, and mice that carry the genes for Alzheimers’s disease perform better on tests of learning and memory following long-term dietary supplementation with vitamins C and E. Following assessment of behavioral abilities the brain and other tissues are examined to try to find the biochemical and cellular changes that are responsible for these changes including neurotransmitter function, oxidative stress and cell death.