Our research examines how psychopathology develops with a particular emphasis on using neurodevelopment to understand how the brain and behaviors may mark mechanisms of emerging risk for psychopathology.
We leverage neurodevelopment to investigate the risk for severe mental illness in three ways: as a history of alterations in neurodevelopment, as a reflection of specific risk environments and factors, and as an interaction factor wherein healthy neurodevelopment modulates risk and resilience. In previous studies, we have studied the brains and behaviors of individuals across the entire risk spectrum, including individuals with premorbid risk traits, attenuated symptoms, early course illness, and chronic diagnoses, including psychosis, depression, anxiety, and bipolar spectrum disorders.
Our current line of research focuses on the role of ovarian hormones in emerging psychopathology and adolescent neurodevelopment. In a newer line of research, I have begun to translate these neurodevelopmental correlates of risk into minimally invasive early interventions such as exercise and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). I am particularly interested in interventions that require minimal barriers to treatment (e.g., cost, equipment, training) that may confer benefits to mental health across diagnoses to benefit individuals regardless of their ultimate formal diagnosis.
