Jennifer Adler

Adler approaches every patient as a unique puzzle to solve. By combining neurocognitive testing with brain imaging, biomarkers, mood data, genetics, medical history, and lifestyle context, she builds a complete functional picture of how each person’s brain is performing and why. Her goal is not just to respond when something goes wrong, but to keep patients cognitively sharp long before symptoms appear. "I don't believe in just reacting to a problem,” Adler says. “To me, it’s important to shift our focus to an optimization and prevention mentality in which we build cognitive reserve and avoid neurodegeneration and disease so people stay asymptomatic.”

That philosophy was shaped early. Adler grew up in a medical household: her mother is a family medicine physician and her father is a neurologist who ran a large brain bank in Arizona focused on Parkinson’s disease research. “I thought the brain was so intricate, and I couldn't fathom how it controlled so many different aspects of our functioning,” she says. A parallel curiosity about human behavior—specifically, why people make destructive choices—drew her toward psychology. When an undergraduate professor introduced her to neuropsychology as “the marriage between neurology and neuroscience and behavior,” she knew she’d found her field.

Adler earned her BA in psychology from the University of Arizona, where she began building her research foundation at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, studying visual contrast acuity in Parkinson’s disease patients and cognitive functioning in youth athletes. She then completed her PhD in clinical psychology with an emphasis on neuropsychology at Palo Alto University, where she ran a lab conducting baseline and sports concussion testing for football players and worked at the Stanford Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, conducting neurodegenerative disease testing to track the neurodegenerative disease process over time—roles that deepened her interest in the intersection of early brain injury and later-life cognitive outcomes.

A mentor’s advice redirected her research approach: If she wanted to study the long-term effects of concussion, she needed to work backwards from established outcomes so she could examine data now rather than waiting for young athletes to age. That insight led Adler to join a large-scale Boston University, multi-center, NIH/NINDS-funded study examining chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and repetitive head impacts in former American football players. Her work on that study continues to generate published findings, including a 2026 paper in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society examining subjective cognitive complaints in former NFL players.

During her PhD program, Adler also published in many other peer-reviewed journals and regularly presented her work at scientific conferences. She did her pre-doctoral internship at Kaiser Permanente San Diego and stayed in San Diego to complete a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Diego’s Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorder Clinic and at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System. At the VA, Adler developed a mindfulness-based stress reduction protocol tailored specifically to traumatic brain injury patients. She was awarded a career development grant to validate and implement this protocol before moving to New York to join Atria.

At Atria, Adler has built a neuropsychological framework that epitomizes the commitment to personalized, proactive care. Inspired by her extensive work with people who are experiencing symptoms, she developed a customized neurocognitive battery of tests for the Atria Brain Health program to screen people early and track their data over time, synthesizing each result alongside the data from all specialists that a patient has seen at Atria to provide individualized recommendations. “Having such a strong research background has really helped me in my clinical care,” she says, “because we know what the data says, and now we get to look at how we can implement it.”

Adler recognizes that conversations about individuals’ cognitive health require deep trust, and she is deliberate about fostering that in every encounter. She approaches each patient with compassion, lighthearted humor, and curiosity about their life before moving into clinical questions. “I like to connect with every patient on a personal level—whether that’s about what they’re reading, their favorite sports team, or what they prioritize,” she says. “We all come from different walks of life, have encountered difficulty and unique situations, and while no two paths are the same, there are common threads that allow us to feel similar emotions. This helps me, as a clinician, attempt to understand how each person is feeling and provide a level of comfort so we can deliver the quality of care they deserve.”

Outside of work, Adler enjoys exploring New York City museums, theater, and restaurants, as well as practicing yoga and playing backgammon and mahjong. She also stays true to her West Coast roots by getting outside as much as possible, whether that’s walking through a park, hiking, or spending time in the ocean.