Background
Cynthia A. Munro, Ph.D., ABBP(CN), is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. After earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from The Ohio State University, she earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Kent State University. She completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology at the University of Pittsburgh’s Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, and then an NIH-sponsored fellowship titled, “Clinical Research Training in Psychiatry,” also at the University of Pittsburgh. She has served on various NIH scientific review committees, and served as a consultant to the DSM-5 neurocognitive disorders workgroup. She currently consults to the National Football League Players’ Association’s dementia care benefit plan (Plan 88) and is an editorial board member of International Psychogeriatrics.
Dr. Munro sees patients through the Johns Hopkins Memory and Alzheimer’s Treatment Center, where she assesses patients with cognitive and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Her overarching goal is to prevent Alzheimer's disease. To this end, her research focuses on discovering novel approaches to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. She is particularly interested in determining why stress can hasten the onset of memory impairment and development of dementia. Although stress cannot be avoided, the way that individuals respond to stress is modifiable. Accordingly, her work focuses on factors (genetic, behavioral, personality, etc.) that influence the physiological response to stress, and importantly, how these factors may differ in men compared to women. She hopes that her work will inform interventions that will delay and even prevent dementia by targeting the way individuals respond to stressful events.