Rate My Professor Lee-Anne Morris

Dr. Lee-Anne Morris is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Medicine at the University of Otago, Christchurch, within the Faculty of Medicine. Originally from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where she worked as a speech-language therapist specializing in adult neurological rehabilitation, Morris holds a Bachelor of Speech-Language Hearing Therapy (BSLHT), a Master of Science (MSc) from the University of Sheffield, UK (2019), with a thesis on linguistic biomarkers for identifying and monitoring cognitive change in mild cognitive impairment, and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from the University of Otago (2024) titled "Cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying apathy in neurodegenerative disease." Her PhD, supervised by Dr. Campbell Le Heron, was recognized as an exceptional doctoral thesis by the University of Otago Division of Health Sciences. Supported by a University of Otago doctoral scholarship, her graduate work transitioned her focus to cognitive neuroscience.

As a cognitive neuroscientist and registered speech-language therapist, Morris investigates the mechanisms of behavioral changes in neurological disease, particularly apathy, impulsivity, amotivation, and disrupted decision-making in neurodegenerative conditions including Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. She employs behavioral tasks, computational modeling, and neuroimaging techniques to explore effort-based decisions, goal-directedness deficits, and nucleus accumbens connectivity. Notable publications include "Decision cost hypersensitivity underlies Huntington's disease apathy" (2025), "Apathy, effort-based decisions and brain integrity in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases" (Brain, 2025), "Goal-directedness deficit in Huntington's disease" (2025), "Decision context and neurobehavioural disturbance in Huntington's disease" (2025), "Altered nucleus accumbens functional connectivity precedes apathy in Parkinson's disease" (Brain, 2023, cited 40 times), and "Disordered Decision Making: A Cognitive Framework for Apathy in Neurodegenerative Disease" (Movement Disorders, 2022, cited 37 times). Morris has secured the Neurological Foundation First Fellowship ($221,357) for research on cholinergic modulation improving motivation in neurodegenerative disorders, the Australasian Winter Conference on Brain Research (AWCBR) Early Career Researcher Speaker Prize (2025), and travel grants. A member of the Health Professions Council South Africa (HPCSA) and the International Society to Advance Alzheimer's Research and Treatment (ISTAART), she is also affiliated with the New Zealand Brain Research Institute, contributing to advancing treatments for motivational deficits in neurology.