Andrew James, Ph.D., of the Psychiatric Research Institute’s Brain Imaging Research Center (BIRC) is currently recruiting healthy adult participants for an MRI research study on childhood trauma and resiliency. “We know that childhood exposure to abuse or neglect is a strong risk factor for developing addiction and other psychiatric disorders later in life. Over the past decade, the BIRC has mapped how the brain changes with childhood adversity to promote susceptibility to mental illness in adulthood.
“But many people who experience childhood adversity do not develop addiction or other disorders later in life, and we want to know how their brains may have adapted following childhood adversity to promote resiliency. If we can identify a neural representation of resiliency, then that opens the door to neuromodulatory approaches like rTMS to ‘train the brain’ toward resiliency.”
The BIRC is seeking adult men and women between the ages of 18 and 40 who experienced childhood trauma like abuse or neglect and did not develop addiction or other psychiatric disorders or any other major medical conditions for its study on resiliency. For more information, please call or text the Brain Imaging Research Center at (501) 420-2653.