Dr. Barnes grew up on Long Island, New York with her parents, two sisters and two brothers. After completing her undergraduate degree in psychology at Columbia University, she did two years of research in neurodegenerative disorders at New York University. She attended SUNY Downstate for medical school, where wonderful mentors encouraged her interest in neurology. She was a member of the Clinical Neurosciences pathway and received the Commendation in Investigative Scholarship and the Abraham Max Rabiner Award for Excellence in Neurology. Following medical school, she completed her medical internship at North Shore University Hospital/Long Island Jewish Medical Center and neurology residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School in Boston. She developed an interest in movement disorders during her residency and completed a two-year Movement Disorders fellowship at the University of Florida Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Okun and Dr. Christopher Hess. During her fellowship she received a grant from the Tyler's Hope Foundation to conduct research in cervical dystonia and published a paper on apathy in dementia with Lewy bodies.

Dr. Barnes is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine. She sub-specializes in movement disorders including Parkinson disease, tremors, dystonia, ataxia and gait disorders. She has expertise in botulinum toxin injection therapy and deep brain stimulation (DBS) intraoperative monitoring and programming for movement disorders.

She is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and is a member of professional societies including the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) and International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (MDS).