About

Tanya Evans is an Assistant Professor at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. Her research specialty includes Autism Spectrum Disorder, cognitive neuroscience, fMRI, and neurodevelopment. She is involved in advancing understanding of neurodevelopmental processes and disorders, contributing to the field through her focus on neurodevelopmental research. Her contact information includes her email at tme4j@virginia.edu and her office phone number 434-243-7757. She is part of the Neuroscience Graduate Program, which is directed by Dr. John Campbell, Associate Professor in the Department of Biology.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Cognitive psychology
• Computer Science
• Cognitive science
• Internal medicine
• Medicine
• Biology
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Contextualizing Socioeconomic Status Effects on Adolescent Brain Structure and Cognitive Skills: Evidence From the ABCD Study

  Developmental Science · 2026-04-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Youths' socioeconomic status (SES) correlates with academic, cognitive, and neural outcomes, partly driven by influences on the developmental environment not captured by caregiver income and education alone. Leveraging Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study data (M = 11.92 years; total n = 8,764), this study took an exploratory comparative approach, examining independent and interacting associations of SES indicators and home context qualities with neural structure and cognitive skills. Theory-driven analyses focused on the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), a key region for numerical and domain-general processing. Random forest regression (RFR) was used to evaluate results' brain-wide generalizability across 74 other cortical areas. Caregiver attentiveness and nightly sleep showed consistent positive associations with cognitive skills and IPS structure, respectively, controlling for SES and other home context factors. Interactions indicated that home learning emphasis and organization moderated SES associations with IPS morphology and cognitive skills. Data-driven analyses indicated that most associations identified with IPS morphology were moderate in strength rather than region-specific, with frontal and temporal cortical measures showing stronger links with SES. This work illustrates how data-driven approaches can complement theory-driven analyses by contextualizing the scope of theorized neural effects, an important check when modeling inherently complex developmental phenomena. Moreover, by directly comparing specific, potentially modifiable home context factors rather than focusing on SES indicators alone, such comparative approaches help clarify which factors may be most promising to prioritize in future intervention research. SUMMARY: Exploratory comparison of contextual factors as independent predictors and moderators of socioeconomic status (SES) associations with neural structure and cognition (ABCD; n = 8,764). Caregiver attentiveness and sleep quality were consistently associated with cognitive skills and intraparietal sulcus (IPS) morphology, respectively. Home organization and learning attitudes moderated SES associations. Machine learning sensitivity analyses suggest observed associations extend beyond the IPS to multiple cortical regions, supporting the relevance of SES-context analyses for understanding brain-wide effects. Integrating theory-driven regression with data-driven analyses reveals limits of region-specific models and underscores the value of distributed, computational approaches for more fully capturing developmental patterns.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Microglial regulation of white matter development and its disruption in autism spectrum disorder

  Cerebral Cortex · 2025-04-01 · 9 citations

  review

  White matter, comprising approximately 50% of the human brain, is crucial for efficient neuronal signaling and a wide range of brain functions, including social cognition, sensation, memory, motor control, and information integration across cortical brain regions in the service of perception and cognition. White matter, composed of myelinated axons, results from complex interactions between different cell types, with oligodendrocytes (OLs) and microglia playing integral roles. Microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, regulate oligodendrogenesis through phagocytosis and molecular signaling, for example through cytokines, which promote and inhibit maturation stages of OL lineage cells. Maternal immune activation (MIA) is a recognized risk factor for neurodevelopmental disorders, especially autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The physiological presentation of ASD includes white matter abnormalities and immune dysregulation. Emerging evidence indicates that MIA may reduce microglial reactivity and alter cytokine release in offspring, potentially disrupting the delicate balance required for proper white matter development. Understanding the intricate interplay between oligodendrocytes, microglia, inflammation, and white matter development in the context of MIA provides valuable insights into the etiology of and core symptoms of ASD and possible therapeutic targets.

  PublisherDOI

• Leveraging longitudinal in-school assessments to understand reading risk in SeLECTs: a proof-of-concept cohort

  Epilepsy & Behavior · 2025-07-08

  article
  PublisherDOI

• ALE Meta-Analysis Reveals Neural Substrates for the Impact of Prematurity on Executive Functioning in Children and Adults

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-06-25

  preprintOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Premature birth has known impacts on brain development, leading to sustained differences in cognitive function throughout the lifespan. Despite known deficits in executive functioning (EF) within individuals born premature, the extent to which neural engagement during executive functioning tasks differs between those born preterm and full-term is not fully understood. Additionally, it is unknown whether regions of differential engagement are the same in children and adults. This meta-analysis synthesizes fMRI results of activation differences between preterm and full-term subjects during executive functioning tasks in adult and child groups separately. Our results indicate that differences in neural engagement during EF tasks differ between pre-term (PT) and full term (FT) individuals in both age groups. Moreover, the regions affected contribute to well-known brain networks, including the fronto-striatal circuitry, the default mode network (DMN), and the salience network, all of which subserve broad EF capabilities. We found no differences between child and adult maps in a direct contrast, suggesting that effects of prematurity on executive functioning may persist from childhood into adulthood, although these findings should be interpreted in context of methodological limitations and potential confounding factors. This meta-analysis provides greater insight into the neural mechanisms behind EF disruption following premature birth. Highlights: Differences in neural activation during executive function tasks exist in both children and adults with a history of premature birth.PT children show hyperactivity in fronto-striatal regions while PT adults show differential engagement of default mode network regions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Math anxiety and arithmetic learning: Evidence for impaired procedural learning and enhanced retrieval learning.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · 2025-02-13 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  . The present study drew on our understanding of disparate long-term learning and memory systems to provide a framework for how HMA potentially disrupts specific types of math learning. Adult participants completed unfamiliar multiplication trials (e.g., 219 × 4 = ?) in two sessions across consecutive days. Repeated problems enabled retrieval arithmetic learning by repeating the same four problems a total of 72 times each (288 total trials). Unrepeated problems enabled procedural arithmetic learning by repeating a consistent problem structure but without ever repeating a specific problem (288 total trials). HMA subjects (HMAs) showed impaired learning of unrepeated problems suggesting that math anxiety may have disrupted procedural math learning. Conversely, learning of repeated problems was accelerated in HMAs relative to low math anxious subjects, suggesting enhanced retrieval learning. We interpret these results within the context of effort-avoidance and well-established learning and memory systems, suggesting that HMAs enhance effort on declarative memory-mediated retrieval learning possibly at the expense of efficiency gains in procedural memory-mediated learning of computational procedures. This work also suggests that the mechanisms linking math anxiety with math performance may differ in important ways from how math anxiety impacts math learning. Further, this work highlights the potential value of considering how math anxiety interacts with multiple types of math learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Child-Parent Interaction Quality Shows Opposite Relationships with Language Comprehension Skill and Autism Symptomatology

  Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders · 2025-10-24

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  PURPOSE: Childhood literacy predicts long-term learning outcomes and comprises decoding and linguistic comprehension skills. Decoding involves pattern recognition and sentence parsing, while linguistic comprehension requires understanding semantic context. Each component may differentially relate to social processing, carrying implications for reading among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who often exhibit atypical social processing and communication. METHODS: We investigated relationships between social behavior patterns and literacy subskills among children aged 6-11 with (n = 18) and without (n = 27) ASD. We examined associations between behavioral attunement during a cooperative task between children and their parent, children's scores on standardized reading assessments, and children's autism symptoms. Behavioral attunement was coded through video recordings of child-parent interactions. RESULTS: Controlling for general intelligence, behavioral attunement was positively associated with reading comprehension and negatively associated with phonemic decoding and autism symptom severity in neurotypical and autistic children. While behavioral attunement's positive relationship with reading comprehension was driven by the subsample with ASD, its negative relationships with phonemic decoding and autism symptoms were only present for the full sample. CONCLUSION: These findings support a significant influence of social processing on linguistic comprehension skills, particularly among children with ASD, as well as an influence of autism symptoms on behavioral attunement, even in children without a formal ASD diagnosis.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Microbiome’s effect on white matter in autism

  Journal of Neurophysiology · 2025-02-25 · 6 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by deficits in social communication and restricted, repetitive behavioral patterns. Although other physiological presentations in individuals with ASD are heterogeneous, neuroimaging studies have consistently revealed a developmental pattern of initial white matter hypermyelination followed by reduced myelination compared with typically developing peers. Multiple studies have demonstrated that core ASD symptoms, including impairments in social skills, language acquisition, learning capabilities, motor performance, and sensory processing, correlate significantly with white matter dysregulation measured through diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Longitudinal studies have shown that decreased gut microbiome diversity, particularly reductions in beneficial bacteria such as Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, correlates with symptom severity. Emerging mechanistic evidence suggests bidirectional relationships between microbiome composition and white matter development, both directly through metabolites like short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that regulate oligodendrocyte function and subsequent myelination, and indirectly through modulation of neuroinflammatory pathways. By integrating molecular-level gut physiology findings with macro-level brain imaging data, we may identify novel therapeutic approaches targeting the gut-brain axis in ASD management.

  PublisherDOI

• The Convergence of Early-Life Stress and Autism Spectrum Disorder on the Epigenetics of Genes Key to the HPA Axis

  Biology · 2025-12-30

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) arises from complex genetic and environmental influences. Despite its prevalence and being the focus of study for several decades, its causes and their underlying mechanisms are still not fully understood. However, one consistent causal mechanism of interest is epigenetic modification. While some risk factors, such as maternal stress, nutrition, and environmental toxins, have a more established epigenetic connection, early-life stress (ELS) in the postnatal years is less studied but may be just as impactful in terms of phenotypic outcomes. A major intermediary between ELS and ASD is likely the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA axis), which has been shown to be epigenetically modified by ELS and whose genes and dysfunction overlap with ASD genes and symptoms. In this narrative review, we synthesize human and animal evidence to examine the relationships between ELS and ASD through epigenetic regulation of a non-exhaustive list of autism candidate genes involved in the HPA axis, including NR3C1, FKBP5, MECP2, GAD1, RELN, SHANK3, OXTR, and BDNF. We discuss how ELS-induced epigenetics may modulate HPA axis negative feedback, and how epigenetic alterations in this pathway and associated genes could affect ASD phenotypes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Neural specialization with generalizable representations underlies children’s cognitive development of attention.

  American Psychologist · 2024-02-01 · 3 citations

  article

  From childhood to adulthood, the human brain develops highly specialized yet interacting neural modules that give rise to nuanced attention and other cognitive functions. Each module can specialize over development to support specific functions, yet also coexist in multiple neurobiological modes to support distinct processes. Advances in cognitive neuroscience have conceptualized human attention as a set of cognitive processes anchored in highly specialized yet interacting neural systems. The underlying mechanisms of how these systems interplay to support children's cognitive development of multiple attention processes remain unknown. Leveraging developmental functional magnetic resonance imaging with attention network test paradigm, we demonstrate differential neurocognitive development of three core attentional processes from childhood to adulthood, with alerting reaching adult-like level earlier, followed by orienting and executive attention with more protracted development throughout middle and late childhood. Relative to adults, young children exhibit immature specialization with less pronounced dissociation of neural systems specific to each attentional process. Children manifest adult-like distributed representations in the ventral attention and cingulo-opercular networks, but less stable and weaker generalizable representations across multiple processes in the dorsal attention network. Our findings provide insights into the functional specialization and generalization of neural representations scaffolding cognitive development of core attentional processes from childhood to adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Declarative memory supports children’s math skills: A longitudinal study

  PLoS ONE · 2024-07-25 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Substantial progress has been made in understanding the neurocognitive underpinnings of learning math. Building on this work, it has been hypothesized that declarative and procedural memory, two domain-general learning and memory systems, play important roles in acquiring math skills. In a longitudinal study, we tested whether in fact declarative and procedural memory predict children's math skills during elementary school years. A sample of 109 children was tested across grades 2, 3 and 4. Linear mixed-effects regression and structural equation modeling revealed the following. First, learning in declarative but not procedural memory was associated with math skills within each grade. Second, declarative but not procedural memory in each grade was related to math skills in all later grades (e.g., declarative memory in grade 2 was related to math skills in grade 4). Sensitivity analyses showed that the pattern of results was robust, except for the longitudinal prediction of later math skills when accounting for stable inter-individual differences via the inclusion of random intercepts. Our findings highlight the foundational role of early domain-general learning and memory in children's acquisition of math.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Neurodevelopmental Basis of Persistent Mathematical Learning Disabilities

  NIH · $127k · 2015–2018

Frequent coauthors

• D. Lynn Flowers

  Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals

  16 shared

• Guinevere F. Eden

  Georgetown University

  15 shared

• Eileen M. Napoliello

  Georgetown University Medical Center

  12 shared

• Olumide A. Olulade

  Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center

  7 shared

• Shaozheng Qin

  7 shared

• Vinod Menon

  Neurosciences Institute

  7 shared

• Michael T. Ullman

  Georgetown University

  6 shared

• Shuping Tan

  Beijing HuiLongGuan Hospital

  4 shared

Education

• PhD, Neuroscience

  Georgetown University