Understanding the Learning Brain One Collaboration at a Time

Tanya Evans wants to understand why some children struggle to read, why others find math difficult, and what the brain can tell us about both. An associate professor in the School of Education and Human Development and co-director of the UVA Brain Institute, Evans uses neuroscience to study learning differences including dyslexia, reading disabilities, and math ability, with the goal of developing targeted interventions for the students who need them most.

“Adding neuroscience as a methodology really allows us to understand the mechanisms underlying brain development and individual differences,” she said. The approach is cross-disciplinary by design, and Evans has found UVA to be an ideal environment for it.

The culture of UVA research is so incredibly collaborative. And that, to be honest, has been what’s kept me here.

TETanya EvansAssociate professor in the School of Education and Human Development and co-director of the UVA Brain Institute

That collaborative spirit has shaped her work across UVA. With Kevin Pelphrey in neurology, Evans has studied late diagnoses of autism. With Jessica Connelly and Stephen Boker in psychology, she discovered a relationship between epigenetic markers of engagement and brain synchrony.

A $3 million NIH grant supports her ongoing partnership with Georgetown professors Michael Ullman and Ian Lyons, studying how declarative and procedural memory systems affect math ability.

“The goal here is to understand the contributions of these memory systems, when they come online, and when they might be more necessary or less necessary. Ultimately, this informs us about individual differences in skill level and how we might leverage these memory systems to support that learning,” Evans said.

Data collection is still ongoing, but patterns are emerging. “It really seems to be a synergistic effect where these two memory systems are working in tandem,” Evans said. “There is a shift over development from declarative to procedural memory, but both are involved throughout.” The same pattern appears in her reading research, with one key difference: in reading, the shift runs in the opposite direction, from procedural to declarative memory. Both findings point toward future intervention testing.

As co-director of the Brain Institute, Evans works to support collaboration across investigators, strengthen funding efforts, and open doors for students. That last priority is personal.

“I work with students here at UVA, and they are truly the foundation of the work that I do,” Evans said. “Engaging this talented community has been an integral part of my success.”

This story originally appeared in the 2026 Annual Research Report, produced by the Office of the Vice President of Research. Find more stories from this report here:  https://news.research.virginia.edu

Video Transcript:

 Our research focuses on how brain development relates to the type of  skills that are necessary to succeed in the classroom. So it includes reading, math, socio-emotional learning. And adding neuroscience research to educational research really is a complement, right? It allows us to understand further the mechanisms that are underlying a particular domain, and also it can inform us for teaching methods or interventions that might be helpful.

We’re studying how memory systems, specifically declarative and procedural, affect children’s ability in reading and math. what we’ve found so far is that early declarative memory predicts later skills in both reading and math, and it seems like procedural memory might come into play later.

Cross-disciplinary research broadens the space of scientific inquiry. It adds to the toolbox of methods that can be employed. Really, each discipline has its own vantage point, but by combining those fields together, it can provide perspectives that wouldn’t be there otherwise. It allows for a more rich understanding of that area of investigation.

In my role as co-director of the UVA Brain Institute, I’m really trying to build a more connected community of neuroscience researchers across grounds. Trainees are often the catalyst for interdisciplinary research, so ensuring that they have the opportunity to engage with researchers across grounds is crucial.