Katie A. McLaughlin, Lab Director, receives the Neuropsychopharmacology Editor's Award for a Transformative Original Report

December 15, 2017
Kate McLaughlin photo

Kaite A. McLaughlin, Lab Director, receives the Neuropsychopharmacology Editor's Award for a Transformative Original Report.  This award was given to lab research examining how exposure to maltreatment in childhood influences how children learn about threat and safety in the environment, and the role that differences in brain structure play in these learning differences.  The paper demonstrates that children who have experienced maltreatment have a difficult time discriminating between threat and safety cues, which is linked to reductions in amygdala volume.  These alterations in emotional learning are a mechanism linking child maltreatment to higher levels of externalizing symptoms in children. 

You can read the full paper here.