Adolescence is a period of neurodevelopment during which risky behaviors often increase. This may be explained by the mismatch in brain maturation between bottom-up rewar [...]

The GABRA2 gene encodes a subunit of a GABAA receptor found in the mesolimbic reward circuitry, and modulation of GABAA receptors by alcohol is hypothesized to contribute [...]

Adolescence is a period of neurodevelopment, which renders the brain vulnerable to the neurotoxic effects of alcohol. Preclinical and human studies suggest that frontal [...]

The etiology of adolescent internalizing psychopathology (e.g., anxiety and depression) is not yet fully understood, and for that reason it has been difficult to identify [...]

Nearly one in five children (17%) aged 2-8 were diagnosed with either a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder in 2016 in the US. Early identification o [...]

Youth with a family history of alcoholism (FHP) are at elevated risk for alcohol use disorders (AUDs) and may exhibit pre-morbid neural differences in emotion-cognition p [...]

Depression rates are climbing, and the etiology is multi-factorial. The overarching goal of the present work is to examine specific neurobiological and psychosocial risk [...]

Adolescence is marked by significant brain development and vulnerability to disorders affecting learning and memory. While aerobic exercise benefits cognition in adults, [...]

Risk for major depressive disorder (MDD) increases dramatically during adolescence and disproportionately affects girls. The mechanisms mediating sex differences in the [...]

A dissertation with a central goal of elucidating to what extent emotion regulation, measured behaviorally and neurobiologically, can explain the association between NLEs [...]