Rate My Professor Kyla Horne

Dr Kyla-Louise Horne is a Research Fellow at the New Zealand Brain Research Institute in Christchurch, New Zealand, with an affiliation to the Department of Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Otago, Christchurch, within the Health Sciences Division. She earned her PhD in Neuropsychology from the University of Canterbury, along with a BA (Hons) and BSc from the same institution. Her academic career includes receiving a Brain Research New Zealand Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2017 while at the University of Otago. Horne's research centers on cognitive and neuropsychiatric aspects of neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease, ageing, cognitive impairment, dementia, hallucinations, perceptual disturbances, mood disorders, and caregiver burden. She contributes significantly to the New Zealand Parkinson's Progression Programme (NZP3), a longitudinal study tracking disease progression through clinical, neurocognitive, and neuroimaging assessments. Current projects under her involvement explore dementia risk in Parkinson's disease, MRI-derived modelling of ageing, speech disfluencies, apathy, impulsivity, and decision-making deficits in these conditions.

Horne has co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals, demonstrating her impact in the field. Key works include 'Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Association of Clinical and Neurocognitive Factors With Apathy in Patients With Parkinson Disease' (Neurology, 2024, with Le Heron et al.), 'Decision cost hypersensitivity underlies Huntington’s disease apathy' (Brain, 2025, with Morris et al.), 'Early-phase amyloid PET reproduces metabolic signatures of cognitive decline in Parkinson's disease' (Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, 2024, with Aye et al.), 'Neuropsychiatric symptoms are associated with dementia in Parkinson’s disease but not predictive of it' (Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, 2021), 'Caregiver burden is increased in Parkinson's disease with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI)' (Clinical Parkinsonism & Related Disorders, 2017, with Jones et al.), and 'The New Zealand Parkinson’s Progression Programme' (Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 2023, with MacAskill et al.). She supervises postgraduate students, including Ann Holden for a PhD at the University of Otago Christchurch from 2021 to 2024. Her work advances understanding of neurobehavioral disturbances and informs clinical management in neurodegenerative diseases.