The research of the Fundamentals of the Adolescent Brain (FAB) Lab examines the development, neural correlates and disruption of cognitive control in psychiatric disorders. Our primary focus is on the adolescent brain and the implications of our discoveries for the treatment of young people in medicine and in our legal system.
The Fundamentals of the Adolescent Brain (FAB) Lab moved to Barnard College-Columbia University in 2022. The lab focuses on cognitive control and the adolescent brain. The adolescent brain has received a lot of media coverage with advances in brain imaging techniques that provide a voyeuristic opportunity for us to look under the hood of the behaving adolescent brain. These methods together with sophisticated animal studies are providing new insights as to why young people experience and respond to the world in unique ways. The work in the Fundamentals of the Adolescent Brain (FAB) lab uses human imaging and animal models on topics that range from cognitive control to mental illness to social and legal policy. Rather than depicting the teen brain as defective, our research paints a picture of a brain that is sculpted by both biological and experiential factors to adapt to the unique social, physical, sexual and intellectual challenges of adolescence. Specifically we are interested in which situations lead to diminished cognitive control and which lead to adaptive behavior. When does the capacity for self control fully mature? How do changes in neural circuitry help to explain changes in cognitive control across development? Are these changes observed in other species and if so, how might they be evolutionarily adaptive and when do they become maladaptive?
See publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OQQzJnsAAAAJ&hl=en
Our Values
The FAB Lab promotes and embraces a supportive, respectful, and open-minded climate free of harassment and unfair treatment. We do not tolerate bias-motivated actions or discriminatory behaviors towards groups based on social identities including race, ethnicity, country of origin, religion, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, age, or (dis)ability status.