Guerry Peavy, PhD

JAD profile

Affiliation(s): 

University of California at San Diego

Areas of Interest: 

Alzheimer's disease, neuropsychological testing, risk factors, chronic stress

Biography & Research: 

Dr. Guerry Peavy earned her degree in Clinical Psychology at the University of Connecticut prior to serving as a postdoctoral fellow in Neuropsychology with Dr. Edith Kaplan at the Boston VA Medical Center. She gained experience in neuropsychological assessment with Dr. M-Marsel Mesulam in the Behavioral Neurology Unit of the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. She has contributed to the efforts of the clinical (neuropsychology) core of the UCSD Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC) for over 20 years by supervising psychometrists, contributing to the multidisciplinary review of cases, interpreting subject neuropsychological performance for diagnostic purposes, and working with medical students, visiting scholars, and graduate students on research projects focused on AD. As sole PI, Dr. Peavy received two major grants on the topic of stress and dementia (Alzheimer’s Association; NIMH R01). In addition to numerous published abstracts and invited presentations based on this work, she published papers identifying an interaction between chronic stress and a genetic risk factor for AD (APOE-e4 allele), effects of chronic event-based stress and aspects of diurnal cortisol on memory decline in older adults, and specific aspects of chronic stress associated with diagnostic change (i.e., normal to MCI; MCI to dementia). She also published a paper showing an association between subjective memory complaints and specific measures of cortisol in older adults. She has been invited to submit editorials by the editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry concerning chronic stress and the editors of the journal Neurology addressing issues central to the understanding of Parkinson’s disease. She has also been invited to serve on expert panels for the U S Food and Drug Administration evaluating controversial neurological devices with potential to affect cognitive functioning. She currently serves as Core leader for the Shiley-Marcos ADRC Outreach, Recruitment and Education (ORE) Core and is PI on a state grant addressing cognition in Latino and non-Latino dementia caregivers.