Faculty Member
Associate Professor in Residence
Department of Ophthalmology
Department of Neurobiology
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles
Jules Stein Eye Institute, Room A-200
100 Stein Plaza Driveway,
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Faculty Member
Lecturer
Department of Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology
College of Life Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles
Gonda Neuroscience Genetics Research Center, Ste 1320
695 Charles E. Young Drive South
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Publications
A selected list of publications:
Lichtenberg Nina T, Thompson Andrew B, Iguchi Martin Y, Evans Christopher J, Romero-Calderón Rafael An Undergraduate Student-Led Neuroscience Outreach Program Shows Promise in Shifting Teen Attitudes About Drugs Mind, brain and education : the official journal of the International Mind, Brain, and Education Society, 2020; 14(4): 387-399.
Faculty Member
Professor
Department of Epidemiology
Department of Environmental Health Sciences
Fielding School of Public Health
University of California, Los Angeles
UCLA Pub Hlth-Epid
73-320A Center for Health Sciences, BOX 951772
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Biography
Beate Ritz joined the faculty of the School of Public Health at UCLA in 1995 and is currently Professor and Vice Chair of the Epidemiology Department and holds co-appointments in the Environmental Health department at the UCLA School of Public Health and in Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine; she is a member of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH), the Southern California Environmental Health Science Center (SCEHSC), and co-directs the NIEHS-funded UCLA Center for Gene-Environment Studies of Parkinson’s disease.
Dr. Ritz received her MD and a PhD in Medical Sociology from the University of Hamburg Germany in 1983 and 1987; she was a research fellow and resident at the Psychiatric University-Hospital in Hamburg from 1987-1989, and received doctoral training and a PhD degree in Epidemiology in 1995 from UCLA.
Her research focuses on the health effects of occupational and environmental toxins such as pesticides, ionizing radiation, and air pollution on chronic diseases including neurodegenerative disorders (Parkinson’s disease), cancers, and adverse birth outcomes and asthma. She previously investigated the causes of cancer in chemical toxin and radiation exposed workers and assessed the impact of ergonomic work-place factors on musculo-skeletal disorders. For the past decade, she studied the effects of air pollution on adverse birth outcomes as well as asthma in children in Southern California. In 2006, she received the Robert M Zweig Memorial award for outstanding achievement in air quality and medicine from the South Coast Air Quality Management District. She also spend the past 15 years investigating the long-term effects of pesticide exposures on Parkinson’s disease and cancers and is currently conducting a project to implement a Parkinson’s disease registry required by a new law in California.
In her research she uses geographic information system (GIS) modeling of environmental exposures including pesticide use and traffic related air pollution in California and investigates links between genetic susceptibility factors and environmental exposures in populations. She is directing and collaborating in a large number of federally (NIH, DOD), state (California Air Resources Board), and foundation (Michael J Fox Foundation) funded research projects.
Publications
A selected list of publications:
Manthripragada A, Cockburn M, Costello S, Bronstein J, Ritz B. Paraoxonase-1 gene Leu-Met 55 polymorphism may modify the estimated effects of agricultural organophosphate exposure on Parkinson’s disease. In Press: Epidemiology, , 2009; .
Faculty Member
Professor
Department of Psychology
Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles
8534 Pritzker Hall
Box 951563
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Biography
Jesse Rissman joined the UCLA faculty in 2011 and holds appointments in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences. He earned his ScB in Cognitive Neuroscience from Brown University, his PhD in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. His research investigates how goal-directed attention shapes memory processes across short and long timescales. Using a combination of functional MRI, transcranial brain stimulation, diffusion tensor imaging, and eye-tracking, his lab examines the neural mechanisms underlying memory formation, maintenance, and retrieval.
Dr. Rissman develops and applies advanced neuroimaging methods, using multi-voxel pattern analysis to decode mental representations and connectivity modeling techniques—both functional and structural—to examine interactions between brain regions that support memory and attentional control. His work has illuminated how prefrontal control systems prioritize relevant information and suppress distractions, and how these dynamic processes influence what is remembered. He often employs naturalistic paradigms, such as immersive virtual reality and wearable cameras, to study autobiographical memory and cognition in real-world settings. In addition to characterizing memory mechanisms in healthy individuals, his research extends to aging and clinical populations, with the goal of understanding how memory and cognitive control processes are altered in these groups.
Publications
A selected list of publications:
Kadlec, J., Walsh, C.R., Sade, U., Amir, A., Rissman, J., and Ramot, M. (2024). A measure of reliability convergence to select and optimize cognitive tasks for individual differences research. Communications Psychology, 2(1), 64.
Rissman, J. and Murphy, E.R. (2024) Brain-based Memory Detection and the New Science of Mind Reading. In Kahana, M.J. & Wagner, A.D. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Human Memory (pp. 2329-2350). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Walsh, C.R. and Rissman, J. (2023). Behavioral representational similarity analysis reveals how episodic learning is influenced by and reshapes semantic memory. Nature Communications, 14, 7548.
Han, L.T., Cohen, M.S., He, L.K., Green, L.M., Knowlton, B.J., Castel, A.D, and Rissman, J. (2023) Establishing a causal role for left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in value-directed memory encoding with high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation. Neuropsychologia, 181, 108489.
Essoe, J. K. Y., Reggente, N., Ohno, A. A., Baek, Y. H., Dell’italia, J., and Rissman, J. (2022). Enhancing learning and retention with distinctive virtual reality environments and mental context reinstatement. npj Science of Learning, 7, 31.
Murray, C.A., Tarlow, M., Rissman, J., and Shams, L. (2022). Multisensory encoding of names via name tags facilitates remembering. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 36(6), 1277-1291.
Cherkaoui, M., Rissman, J., Hampson, M., and Lau, H.C. (2021) Ethical considerations for fMRI neurofeedback. In Hampson, M. (Ed.), FMRI Neurofeedback, Elsevier.
Lenartowicz, A., Truong, H., Enriquez, K.D., Webster, J., Pochon, J.B., Rissman, J., Bearden, C.E., Loo, S.K., and Bilder, R.M. (2021). Neurocognitive subprocesses of working memory performance. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 21(6), 1130-1152.
Murphy, E.R. and Rissman, J. (2020). Evidence of Memory from Brain Data. Journal of Law and the Biosciences, lsaa078, 1-58.
Reggente, N., Essoe, J.K-Y., Baek, H.Y-J., and Rissman, J. (2020). The Method of Loci in virtual reality: Explicit binding of objects to spatial contexts enhances subsequent memory recall. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 4, 12-30.
Westphal Andrew J, Chow Tiffany E, Ngoy Corey, Zuo Xiaoye, Liao Vivian, Storozuk Laryssa A, Peters Megan A K, Wu Allan D, Rissman Jesse Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to the Left Rostrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Selectively Improves Source Memory Retrieval Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 2019; 31(9): 1380-1391.
Hennessee Joseph P, Reggente Nicco, Cohen Michael S, Rissman Jesse, Castel Alan D, Knowlton Barbara J White matter integrity in brain structures supporting semantic processing is associated with value-directed remembering in older adults Neuropsychologia, 2019; 129(9): 246-254.
Bainbridge Wilma A, Rissman Jesse Dissociating neural markers of stimulus memorability and subjective recognition during episodic retrieval Scientific reports, 2018; 8(1): 8679.
