Patricia Ann Reuter-Lorenz is an American psychologist who is the Michael I. Posner Collegiate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan. Reuter-Lorenz is Chair of the School of Psychology and researches the cognitive mechanisms of attention. She was elected Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

Early life and education

Reuter-Lorenz was an undergraduate student at the

State University of New York at Purchase The State University of New York at Purchase (commonly Purchase College or SUNY Purchase) is a public liberal arts college in Purchase, New York. It is one of 13 comprehensive colleges in the State University of New York (SUNY) system. It was fo ...

in 1979. She moved to the University of Toronto for graduate studies, where she earned a master's degree in 1981. Her doctoral research considered the distribution of attention in space and how this was biased contralateral to the activated hemisphere. During her doctorate, she worked as an intern at the

Clarke Institute of Psychiatry The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (College Street site) is a psychiatric hospital in Toronto, Ontario. It is located at 250 College Street, just east of Spadina Avenue. Much of its work focuses on forensic psychology, sex addiction, drug ...

in Toronto. She received her doctorate in 1987. Reuter-Lorenz spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University before joining Dartmouth College as an assistant professor in research.

Research and career

In 1992, Reuter-Lorenz joined the University of Michigan, where she established the Cognitive and Affective Neuropsychology Laboratory. Her research considers the cognitive and neural mechanisms of attention. Whilst she has served as a visiting researcher at University of Texas at Dallas and

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, she remained at Michigan throughout her academic career. She was made Professor in 2002 and the Michael I. Posner Collegiate Professor in 2016. Reuter-Lorenz has studied the neural processes of the aging brain. Together with Denise Park, she showed that whilst the brain underwent structural degradation with aging, it simultaneously builds new neural circuitry to accommodate for these changes. This model, known as CRUNCH, explains that loss in one area of the brain is compensated for by gains in others. If this 'scaffolding' starts early, the cognitive decline occurs faster.

Awards and honors

* 2009 American Psychological Association Mentor Award * 2010 Justine & Yves Sergent Award * 2012 Elected Fellow of the

Society of Experimental Psychologists The Society of Experimental Psychologists (SEP), originally called the Society of Experimentalists, is an academic society for experimental psychologists. It was founded by Edward Bradford Titchener in 1904 to be an ongoing workshop in which memb ...

* 2013 Elected Fellow of the Psychonomic Society * 2015 University of Michigan Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award * 2021 World's Top 2% Scientists * 2021 Elected Fellow of the

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia Living people University of Toronto alumni State University of New York at Purchase alumni University of Michigan faculty 21st-century American psychologists 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American women scientists Year of birth missing (living people)