Rate My Professor Rebecca Spencer

Rebecca M. C. Spencer is a Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she directs the Somneuro Lab. She earned a BA in Biology and Kinesiology from Hope College and a PhD in Neuroscience from Purdue University in 2002, concentrating in neural control of movement. Following her graduate training, she served as a postdoctoral fellow and research scientist at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, until 2008. Her postdoctoral work on neural control of motor sequence learning was funded by an NIH National Research Service Award. She subsequently received an NIH Pathways to Independence Award (K99/R00) for research on age-related changes in sleep-dependent consolidation of motor learning. Spencer joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2008 as an Assistant Professor in Psychological and Brain Sciences, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2013, and advanced to Professor. She currently holds two NIH R01 awards: one from the National Institute on Aging for studies on sleep quality and memory impairments in older adults, and one from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute investigating the memory function of midday naps in preschool children.

Spencer's research program examines the role of sleep in cognition, action, and memory across the lifespan, including neural mechanisms of learning such as the cerebellum's involvement in motor tasks. Her lab employs diverse techniques to investigate sleep-dependent changes in brain function for cognitive and motor learning. With over 60 publications, key contributions include "Sleep spindles in midday naps enhance learning in preschool children" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013), "Sleep and human cognitive development" (Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2021), "Age-related changes in the cognitive function of sleep" (Progress in Brain Research, 2011), and "Processing of emotional reactivity and emotional memory over sleep" (Journal of Neuroscience, 2012). She teaches Science of Sleep (Psych 391), Behavioral Neuroscience (Psych 330), and Neurobiology of Disease (NS&B 891), and serves as Faculty Athletics Representative at UMass Amherst.