Annalysa Lovos was teaching in Texas when she learned that she could study neuroscience without first attending medical school.  

It was like a lightbulb flipping on, she said.   

The Flathead High School graduate had harbored an interest in neuroscience for years, beginning with a car wreck on Lookout Pass in 1997 that left her paraplegic. That interest was later reinforced by motherhood and her decade-long teaching career.   

“I was teaching at the Austin Waldorf School in Austin, Texas, and was working with fourth fifth and sixth graders and I loved them and I got super interested in how they learned,” she said. “As a teacher and a parent, learning and memory are utterly fascinating and so much fun to watch.”  

Lovos recalled picking up scientific journals hoping to maximize her health and recovery while recuperating from the accident. She had gone from being a daily reader of books to being unable to read for months following the accident. It was “really alarming” for her, she said.   

At the time, the articles in the journals went over her head, she said.   

“I always wanted to understand the neuroscience but I didn't have the education to do it,” Lovos recalled.  

She went back to school in 2016, taking science, math and psychology classes before gaining experience in a neuroscience research laboratory at the University of Texas. Then she began looking at graduate programs.   

“I thought I would be able to go where I was living at the time, but it turns out grad school is pretty competitive, but I got a fellowship at the University of Arizona,” she recalled.   

Lovos relocated with her family for the five-year program and began working with world-class professors, simultaneously falling in love with the Grand Canyon State. She completed her doctorate in cognitive neuroscience this past July. Her dissertation focused on memory, its development and its basis in the brain.   

“I'm trained in understanding the cognitive aspects of psychology, memory, decision-making, learning, judgment,” Lovos said. “Those sorts of things are cognitive faculties and so I study and teach their development, things that might happen in our lives that might hinder them or alter their trajectories and what happens as we age or experience different experiences and health outcomes.”  

In her cognitive neuroscience work, Lovos studied how the nervous system supports cognitive functions. On the cognitive psychology side, she used cognitive testing.   

Though pursuing a liberal arts undergraduate degree at the University of Montana when the accident temporarily sidetracked her academic ambitions, Lovos said she always had an affinity for math and science while in high school. Still, there was a lot of ground to gain before she could embark on her career shift.  

“I had to work really hard on the math and science before getting into my graduate program,” she said.  “Even to take your first neuroscience class, the stakes are really high: a year of biology, chemistry, calculus-based physics, and also psychology and computer-based programming. That's a lot of things you have to learn.”  

Along with her degree, Lovos secured a teaching appointment at the University of Arizona, bringing her back to the head of a classroom.   

“I love teaching, I love interacting with young adults and exploring their ideas and helping them learn about research and I feel like my mission is to help students learn how to think critically,” she said. “I feel like I'm in the right place to do that.” 

News Editor Derrick Perkins can be reached at 758-4430 or [email protected]. 

    Completing her doctorate in cognitive neuroscience in July 2024, Flathead High School graduate Annalysa Lovos has secured a teaching position at the University of Arizona. (Photo courtesy of Annalysa Lovos)