Megan Fitzhugh

Title(s)	Postdoctoral Scholar, Neurosciences
School	Vc-health Sciences-schools
Address	9500 Gilman Drive # La Jolla CA 92093
ORCID	0000-0001-5275-7361
vCard	Download vCard

Biography

education and training

University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ	BS	05/2011	Physiology
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ	MS	05/2013	Physiological Sciences
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ	PhD	05/2019	Cognitive Neurosciences
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA	Postdoctoral Fellow	01/2022	Gerontology
University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA	Postdoctoral Scholar	06/2025

Overview

overview

I am actively seeking undergraduate interns to begin in the summer or fall of 2025!

A 1-year commitment and minimum 10 hours/week are requested. Please contact me via email and include a resume/CV and brief description of what you hope to gain from the experience.

My research explores how hearing affects brain health as we age. I study how age-related hearing loss contributes to cognitive decline, including dementia, and how hearing aids and other interventions could help protect the brain. I’m especially interested in how the brain adapts to hearing loss and how social factors like isolation or depression may play a role. By understanding these links, my goal is to improve brain health in later life and make hearing-related care more effective and accessible for everyone.

keywords

Cognitive Neuroscience, Aging, Hearing Loss, Alzheimer's Disease, Dementia

Research

research activities and funding

An emerging Alzheimer's disease risk factor: An investigation of hearing impairment, hippocampal function, and memory in middle-aged and older adults
NIH K22AG081276May 1, 2025 - Apr 30, 2028
Role: Principal Investigator

Bibliographic

selected publications

Publications listed below are automatically derived from MEDLINE/PubMed and other sources, which might result in incorrect or missing publications. Researchers can login to make corrections and additions, or contact us for help. to make corrections and additions.

Altmetrics Details

PMC Citations indicate the number of times the publication was cited by articles in PubMed Central, and the Altmetric score represents citations in news articles and social media. (Note that publications are often cited in additional ways that are not shown here.) Fields are based on how the National Library of Medicine (NLM) classifies the publication's journal and might not represent the specific topic of the publication. Translation tags are based on the publication type and the MeSH terms NLM assigns to the publication. Some publications (especially newer ones and publications not in PubMed) might not yet be assigned Field or Translation tags.) Click a Field or Translation tag to filter the publications.

Women with hearing loss show increased dementia risk and brain atrophy. Alzheimers Dement (Amst). 2023 Oct-Dec; 15(4):e12499. Fitzhugh MC, Pa J. PMID: 38026760; PMCID: PMC10680060.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 1
Longitudinal Changes in Resting-State Functional Connectivity and Gray Matter Volume Are Associated with Conversion to Hearing Impairment in Older Adults. J Alzheimers Dis. 2022; 86(2):905-918. Fitzhugh MC, Pa J. PMID: 35147536; PMCID: PMC10796152.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 7 Fields:
Ger Geriatrics Neu Neurology
Translation:Humans
Distinct Contributions of Working Memory and Attentional Control to Sentence Comprehension in Noise in Persons With Stroke. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2021 Aug 09; 64(8):3230-3241. Fitzhugh MC, LaCroix AN, Rogalsky C. PMID: 34284642; PMCID: PMC8740654.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 3 Fields:
Aud Audiology Spe Speech-Language Pathology
Translation:Humans PHPublic Health
Cognitive and neural predictors of speech comprehension in noisy backgrounds in older adults. Lang Cogn Neurosci. 2021; 36(3):269-287. Fitzhugh MC, Schaefer SY, Baxter LC, Rogalsky C. PMID: 34250179; PMCID: PMC8261331.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 6
Functional Connectivity of Heschl's Gyrus Associated With Age-Related Hearing Loss: A Resting-State fMRI Study. Front Psychol. 2019; 10:2485. Fitzhugh MC, Hemesath A, Schaefer SY, Baxter LC, Rogalsky C. PMID: 31780994; PMCID: PMC6856672.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 21
Age-Related Atrophy and Compensatory Neural Networks in Reading Comprehension. J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2019 Jul; 25(6):569-582. Fitzhugh MC, Braden BB, Sabbagh MN, Rogalsky C, Baxter LC. PMID: 31030698; PMCID: PMC6816336.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 5 Fields:
Neu Neurology Psy Psychology
Translation:Humans
A functional MRI investigation of crossmodal interference in an audiovisual Stroop task. PLoS One. 2019; 14(1):e0210736. Fitzhugh MC, Whitehead PS, Johnson L, Cai JM, Baxter LC, Rogalsky C. PMID: 30645634; PMCID: PMC6333399.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 4 Fields:
Med Medicine (General)Sci Science
Translation:Humans
Functional Neuroanatomy of Second Language Sentence Comprehension: An fMRI Study of Late Learners of American Sign Language. Front Psychol. 2018; 9:1626. Johnson L, Fitzhugh MC, Yi Y, Mickelsen S, Baxter LC, Howard P, Rogalsky C. PMID: 30237778; PMCID: PMC6136263.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 6