Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman
- Founder and Chief Director of the Center for BrainHealth
- Professor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
- Dee Wyly Distinguished University Chair for BrainHealth
A gift from Charles and Dee Wyly helped fund the chair to be held by the chief director of the Center for BrainHealth. Chapman became the inaugural holder of the chair in 2006.
“Most scientists focus on detecting disease and injury to the brain. At the Center for BrainHealth, we focus on neuroplasticity and building brain resilience and reserve to double our peak brain years to match our doubled heart health years.”
Sandra Bond Chapman PhD’86 is committed to maximizing human cognitive potential across the entire lifespan. She founded the Center for BrainHealth in 1999 to define, measure, improve and scale brain health protocols to reach people around the world.
A cognitive neuroscientist with more than 50 funded research grants and over 200 academic publications, her research melds interdisciplinary expertise to understand how to evaluate and achieve optimal development of the brain, cognition, well-being and connectedness across the lifespan. This approach is believed to strengthen frontal networks, which are responsible for innovation, social adeptness, reasoning, planning, decision-making and calm amid chaos. Chapman also promotes brain health fitness, encourages futuristic thinkers and helps individuals of all ages adopt tools to use their brain skills more efficiently and effectively.
Through her efforts, the Center for BrainHealth launched its Brain Performance Institute in 2017 to deliver rapidly emerging discoveries in brain health to the public. Additionally, she spearheaded the UTD Sammons BrainHealth Imaging Center, which opened in 2019 with a focus on developing objective measurements of gains in brain systems following interventions. Chapman is also co-creator of The BrainHealth Project, an international, multiyear collaboration of 33 of the world’s leading brain health experts focused on doubling peak brain performance, preventing decline and extending brain capacity to match longer lifespans. Chapman trademarked the term “Brainomics” to define the immense economic benefit of better brain performance by putting a value on brain skills.
Chapman has garnered federal, state, and private research support for veterans, sports concussions, healthy brain aging, adolescent reasoning and brain development, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, autism, schizophrenia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and social cognition disorders.
“My research reveals optimal brain health fitness is not dictated by how much you know and which details you remember, but instead by how you connect facts and knowledge in new ways to ignite higher order thinking and innovative problem-solving,” said Chapman. “Those habits will ultimately help you thrive in a constantly changing world.”
Chapman earned a bachelor’s degree in speech pathology and a master’s degree in communication disorders, both from the University of North Texas. She earned her doctorate in cognitive neuroscience.