Active
Mechanisms of Adherence
MoA
An adaptive mHealth intervention designed to test the goal maintenance hypothesis.
CAMP Neurolab
Cognitive and Mobile Phenotyping
Promoting cognitive and brain health throughout the lifespan
Our Mission
Digital Innovation to Promote Brain Health
Our mission is to form a better understanding of the dynamic processes that shape our cognitive and brain health.
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Innovate
Design new tools and methods for monitoring and improving brain health in adults of all ages
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Accelerate
Advance theory and practice through novel intensive longitudinal and ambulatory study designs
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Translate
Transform insights into novel mHealth interventions and clinical digital health integrations
Key Research Areas
Our research spans multiple domains of cognitive and brain health, with a focus on real-world assessment and digital technologies.
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Self-regulation & Executive Control
We study how neurocognitive aging shapes our ability to control our thoughts, emotions, and behavior. We leverage insights from our basic research on self-regulation and executive control to inform the design of novel brain health promoting interventions.
- Ambulatory assessment of executive control
- Dynamics of self-regulation in everyday life
- Health promotion and behavior change processes
- Adaptive mHealth interventions
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Modernizing Neuroepidemiology
An over-reliance on conventional assessment methods has limited our understanding of how risk for neurodegenerative disease evolves over our lifespans. High-frequency assessments offer the opportunity to examine how dementia risk and protective factors are transmitted into the everyday lives of individuals.
- Ecological momentary assessment of exposures
- Wearable devices and passive sensing of behavior
- Multi-timescale assessment of cognitive health
- Intensive longitudinal designs for deep phenotyping
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Digital Transformation of Clinical Care
High-frequency assessment and digital health intervention tools have a lot to offer patients at risk for negative cognitive outcomes. We work with clinicians to design novel studies and help unlock insights into symptom dynamics and patient lived experience.
- High-frequency assessment and monitoring of outcomes
- Real-time insights into changes in symptoms and context
- Wearable device integration
- Personalized intervention design
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Methods Development
An overarching goal of our lab is to design and implement technology-driven solutions to challenges in healthy neurocognitive aging and dementia risk reduction. We are part of multiple teams at the forefront of innovations in mobile cognitive assessment, mHealth intervention design, and scalable research technology.
- Ecological momentary assessment (EMA)
- Ambulatory cognitive assessment
- Reproducible workflows
- Open-source tools and software
Our Approach
We leverage cutting-edge methods to understand cognition in real-world contexts, bridging the gap between laboratory findings and everyday life.
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Ecological Momentary Assessment
Capturing real-time experiences and behaviors in natural settings using mobile devices for high ecological validity.
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Ambulatory Cognitive Assessment
Measuring cognitive performance outside the lab using ultra-brief smartphone tasks to understand everyday cognition.
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Wearable Sensors
Leveraging smartwatches and fitness trackers to capture physiological and behavioral data continuously and passively.
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Digital Biomarkers
Mapping computational insights onto brain imaging and blood-based biomarkers.
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Multi-Modal Brain Imaging
Advanced cognitive neuroscience methods for characterizing brain structure and function.
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Translational Focus
Bridging basic research and clinical applications to create tools that improve real-world patient outcomes.
Research Projects
Explore our ongoing and completed research initiatives in cognitive and mobile phenotyping.
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Mechanisms of Adherence
MoA
An adaptive mHealth intervention designed to test the goal maintenance hypothesis.
Physical Activity, Imaging, and Ambulatory Testing
PHIAT
An adult lifespan EMA study examining dynamics of executive control, self-regulation, and health promoting behavior in everyday life.
The Lifelong Development Program
LDP
A scalable technology-driven prospective cohort study of dementia risk and protective factors.
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Our Team
Meet the research team helping to advance our mission.
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Jonathan Hakun
Director
PSU COM Neurology
Daniel Elbich
Data Scientist
PSU COM Neurology
Jessie Alwerdt
Research Program Manager
PSU Center for Healthy Aging
Ashley Tate
Research Project Manager
PSU Center for Healthy Aging
Kari Whitehead
Research Project Manager
PSU Center for Healthy Aging
Autumn Collier
Research Project Manager
PSU COM Neurology
Jennifer Coyl
Research Coordinator
PSU COM Neurology
Beth Kanski
Research Coordinator
PSU COM Neurology
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Research Products
Papers, preprints, and other scholarly outputs from our research.
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The Physical Activity, Imaging, and Ambulatory Testing (PHIAT) Project: Protocol for a High-frequency Ambulatory Assessment Study
Hakun, J.G., Elbich, D.B., Alwerdt, J., Tate, A., Coyl, J., Kanski, B., & Qiu, T
JMIR Research Protocols, 2025
Journal Article
Contextualized Cognition: Clarifying Associations Between Remote Unsupervised Performance and Clinically Relevant Contextual Factors
Brearly, T., Elbich, D.B., & Hakun, J.G
The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 2025
Journal Article
Recruitment of Mid-life Adults to a Randomized Clinical Trial: the Multicultural Healthy Diet Study to Reduce Cognitive Decline & Alzheimer's Disease Risk
Katz, M.J., Johns, T., Martin, M.M., Burgess, A., Claris, V., Volda, J.G., Roque, N., Shaw, P.A., Hyun, N., Hakun, J.G., Pavlovic, J.M., Wylie-Rosett, J., Sliwinski, M.J., Mossavar-Rahmani, Y
Alzheimer's & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions, 2025
Journal Article
The Multicultural Healthy Diet Study to Reduce Cognitive Decline & Alzheimer's Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial in a Diverse Cohort of Middle-Aged Adults
Mossavar-Rahmani, Y., Hyun, N., Hakun, J.G., Katz, M.J., Pavlovic, J.M., Yang, J.B., Wylie-Rosett, J., Hebert, J.R., Sliwinski, M.J., & Shaw, P.A
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2025
Journal Article
Daily Movement Activities are Associated with Instability in Cognitive Function among Older Adults: Evidence from An Ambulatory Assessment Study
Yang, C.H., Lee, J., Prine, H., Coffman, D., Jingkai, W., Hedeker, D., & Hakun, J.G
The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 2025
Journal Article
Computational Phenotyping of Cognitive Decline with Retest Learning
Oravecz, Z., Vanderkerckhove, J., Hakun, J.G., Kim, S.H., Katz, M.J., Wang, C., Lipton, R.B., Derby, C.A., Roque, N.A., & Sliwinski, M.J
The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 2025
Journal Article
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Articles & Insights
A deeper dive into our research, methods, and findings.
Companion to "How We Built..." Article
The "How We Built the CAMP Neurolab Website" article was written by Claude Code. In this article, I share more background about the website build from my perspective as a user of agentic AI tools for vibe coding.
· 7 min
How We Built the CAMP Neurolab Website by Vibe Coding with Claude Code
A cognitive neuroscientist with limited fluency in programming languages built a full-stack research lab website from scratch using Claude Code. Here's the entire story — from the first prompt to a live AWS deployment — and what it reveals about the future of AI-assisted development.
· 12 min
News & Updates
Announcements and other updates from CAMP Neurolab.
NEW 2 items from the last 7 days
Congratulations Jessie!
Jessie Alwerdt promoted to Research Program Manager at Penn State Center for Healthy Aging
1 day ago Read more
New CAMP Neurolab Website Launched
Hello world! We've completed migration of our website from the WordPress version to the custom dynamic web app you're looking at here.
2 days ago Read more