Aging Research Center (ARC) E-mail:sari.karlsson@ki.se |
Sari Karlsson is currently employed as a research scientist at Aging Research Center, Karolinska Institutet. She has been involved in research since 1999, and received a licentiate degree in psychology from Uppsala University in 2002 and a PhD from Karolinska Institutet in 2005.
Her major research field is cognitive functioning in aging and early dementia, using data from longitudinal epidemiological studies and experimental brain imaging studies. She is particularly interested in the following lines of research: (1) The role of dopamine in cognitive aging, with a special focus on whether dopamine binding can be modified with cognitive activity and also how dopamine binding is related to functional brain activity in younger and older people. (2) Cognitive deficits in the preclinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia. (3) How different biological markers of brain function (i.e., brain volumes, functional brain activity and dopamine binding) are related to verbal fluency deficits in old age.
Selected publications
Karlsson, S., Nyberg, L., Karlsson, P., Fischer, H., MacDonald, S.W., Thilers, P., Halldin, C., Farde, L., & Bäckman, L. (2009) Modulation of striatal dopamine D1 binding by cognitive processing. Neuroimage, 48, 398 - 404.
Jones, S., Nyberg, L., Sandblom, J., Stigsdotter Neely, A., Petersson, K. M. P., Ingvar, M., Bäckman, L. (2006). Cognitive and neural plasticity in aging: Limitations in processing and utilization. Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews, 30, 864-871.
Jones, S., Laukka, E. J., Fratiglioni, L. & Bäckman, L. (2006). Differential verbal fluency deficits in the preclinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia. Cortex, 42, 347-355.
Jones, S., Livner, Å., Bäckman, L. (2006). Patterns of Prospective and Retrospective Memory Impairment in Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease. Neuropsychology, 20, 144-152.
Bäckman, L., Jones, S., Berger, A.- K., Laukka, E. J., Small, B. J. (2005) Cognitive impairment inpreclinical Alzheimer's disease: A meta-analysis. Neuropsychology, 19, 520-531.
Laukka, E. J., Jones, S., Fratiglioni, L. & Bäckman, L. (2004). Cognitive functioning in preclinical vascular dementia - A 6- year follow-up. Stroke, 35, 1805-1809.
Jones, S., Laukka, E. J., Small, B. J., Fratiglioni, L. & Bäckman, L. (2004) A preclinical phase in vascular dementia: Cognitive impairment three years before diagnosis. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 18, 233-239.
Nyberg, L., Sandblom, J., Jones, S., Stigsdotter-Neely, A., Peterson, K. M., Ingvar, M., Bäckman, L. (2003) Neural correlates of training-related memory improvement in adulthood and aging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100, 13728-13733.
Juslin, P., Jones, S., Olsson, H. &Winman, A. (2003) Cue abstraction and exemplar memory in categorization: Evidence for multiple representation levels. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory and Cognition, 29, 924-941.
Bäckman, L., Jones, S., Small B. J., Agüero-Torres, H. & Fratiglioni L. (2003) Rate of cognitive decline in preclinical Alzheimer's disease: The role of comorbidity. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 58B, P228-P236.