Lisa Gorham
Program: Neurosciences
Current advisor: Cynthia Rogers, MD
Undergraduate university: Washington University
Research summary
I am a Neuroscience PhD student working in the WUNDER lab (Dr. Cynthia Rogers and Dr. Christopher Smyser). Our lab studies longitudinal trajectories of brain development in neonates and young children using MRI/fMRI, as the first few years of life are a period of rapid and significant brain growth. My project specifically is looking at how structural brain development in the first few years of life is impacted by prematurity and poverty. Additionally, I am investigating how these trajectories of macrostructural brain development relate to both underlying changes in cortical microstructure and cognitive and psychiatric outcomes later in childhood. Ideally, this work will help us better characterize how the brain develops during key periods of plasticity, and how the environment interacts with brain development to impact risk for cognitive and psychiatric difficulties.
Graduate publications