71013-Viswanathan, Jayalakshmi

Jayalakshmi Viswanathan, PhD

Assistant Research Professor of Medical & Molecular Genetics

Address
320 W 15th Street, NB401D
MMGE
IN
Indianapolis, IN

Bio

Dr. Viswanathan holds a Bachelor of Technology (with Honors) in Biotechnology from SASTRA University in India, a Masters in Neuroscience from the University of British Columbia in Canada, and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Toulouse III Paul Sabatier in France. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at University of Maryland prior to working as a Program Analyst (contractor) at the National Institute on Aging. 
 

She started contributing to neuroscience research since her undergrad, and for her honors thesis worked on computerizing the semantic battery in a multi-lingual context at a dementia clinic in India. During her masters, she worked on understanding the mechanisms of visual decision making and oculomotor computations. She extended our understanding of perceptual statistical learning and memory during her PhD by studying mechanisms of long-term memory for meaningless auditory percepts. During her postdoctoral fellowship, she investigated the ways in which speech perception in noise changes with aging using electrophysiology techniques in awake behaving ferrets. After her postdoc, she joined the National Institute on Aging (NIA) as a Program Analyst where she supported translational research program development for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) programs and helped implement NIA’s data sharing policies. She also managed and curated articles to the Alzheimer’s Disease Preclinical Efficacy Database, a knowledge base surfacing the rigor of published articles and preprints reporting on candidate therapeutics to prevent/treat AD/ADRD. She also serves in several professional societies, working groups and committees within the Society for Neuroscience and the Alzheimer’s Association ISTAART. In parallel, she also authored and illustrated a neuroscience book for children, Baby Senses: A Sensory Neuroscience Primer for All Ages and hosts a neuroscience podcast, Know Brainer. 
 

In 2026, she joined the Indiana University School of Medicine as an Assistant Research Professor and Program Manager of the IU Microphysiological Systems as translational tools for AD (MPS-AD) center. Her current projects are focused on the development of MPS models for the MPS-AD center. She is particularly interested in characterizing the bioenergetic and electrophysiological changes in iPSC gene-edited lines and MPS models, as well as the changes induced by environmental perturbations (gene x environment effects). She is also interested in Regulatory Science for drug/device development for AD/ADRD.

Key Publications

C.E. Shaaban, V. Suryadevara, A. V. Hill, S.A. Milani, P. Agarwal, N.T. Aggarwal, R.O. Akinyemi, S. Alladi, M.J. Brown, J.Z.K. Caldwell, P. Caramelli, L. DuBose, R. Ellajosyula, D.K. Esiaka, A. Gibson, P. Griffith, J. Harper, W. Karanja, W. Li, J.J. Llibre-Guerra, S.M. Loi, M.M. Mielke, D.P. Molina-Henry, A. Ogunniyi, S. Pudumjee, S.D. Stites, E. Sundermann, A.D. Turner, C. Vila-Castelar, J. Viswanathan, J.F. Trani, G.M. Babulal, The Population Neuroscience-Dementia Syndemics Framework to better understand global sex and gender-based risk in low- and middle-income countries, Nature Aging 2026 6:1 6 (2026) 38–55. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-025-01035-5.

P.B. Adkins-Jackson, K.M. George, L.M. Besser, J. Hyun, M. Lamar, T.G. Hill-Jarrett, O.M. Bubu, J.D. Flatt, P.C. Heyn, E.C. Cicero, A. Zarina Kraal, P. Pushpalata Zanwar, R. Peterson, B. Kim, R.W. Turner, J. Viswanathan, E.R. Kulick, M. Zuelsdorff, S.D. Stites, M. Arce Rentería, E. Tsoy, D. Seblova, T.K.S. Ng, J.J. Manly, G. Babulal, The structural and social determinants of Alzheimer’s disease related dementias, Alzheimer’s and Dementia 19 (2023) 3171–3185. https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.13027.

Jaya Viswanathan, Baby senses : a sensory neuroscience primer for all ages, (2023) 66. https://search.worldcat.org/title/1378707697.

J. Viswanathan, F. Rémy, N. Bacon-Macé, S.J. Thorpe, Long term memory for noise: Evidence of robust encoding of very short temporal acoustic patterns, Front. Neurosci. 10 (2016) 215314. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2016.00490.

M.J. Brown, D.K. Esiaka, J. Viswanathan, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Depression and Subjective Cognitive Decline by Gender: A Moderated Mediation Analysis, Journal of Applied Gerontology (2025). https://doi.org/10.1177/07334648251386108.

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