Rebekah Evans, PhD

Dr. Rebekah Evans is an assistant professor at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC. She earned her PhD in neuroscience from George Mason University and performed her post-doctoral research at the national institute of neurological disorders and stroke (NINDS) at NIH. Her lab studies the cells and circuits that are disrupted in Parkinson’s Disease with a focus on dopaminergic and cholinergic midbrain neurons. She uses two-photon imaging, electrophysiology, optogenetics, and fiber photometry in pre-clinical models to compare brain circuitry in healthy and pathological conditions with the aim of harnessing circuit-based treatments to alleviate symptoms and slow disease progression. Her current research involves the functional dissection of vulnerable circuits and heterogeneous subpopulations within the pedunculopontine nucleus and substantia nigra pars compacta.