Mariann Weierich: Neurobiological and behavioral mechanisms of stress and stress-related disorders
Title
Neurobiological and behavioral mechanisms of stress and stress-related disorders
Mentor
Department
Biosketch
Mariann Weierich, Ph.D., is the James K. and Lois Merritt Mikawa Professor of Psychology and professor of integrative neuroscience at the Βι¶ΉΣ³». She teaches undergraduate abnormal psychology, in addition to teaching graduate courses. Weierich’s research focuses on some of the neurobiological and behavioral mechanisms that underlie normative stress (the stress we all experience sometimes) and stress-related disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Her lab takes a clinical/cognitive neuroscience approach that integrates neuroimaging, neuroendocrine assay, behavioral tasks, and clinical interviews. Undergraduate trainees in the lab generally focus on learning one or two of these methods in the context of a lab study.
Weierich earned her doctoral degree in clinical psychology from Yale University, where she also trained in vision science. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in affective neuroscience at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging/Harvard Medical School. Weierich joined the faculty at the University of Βι¶ΉΣ³» in 2019. Between her previous faculty position at the City University of New York and her time at the Βι¶ΉΣ³», Weierich has trained more than 80 undergraduate and graduate students, of whom 26 were underrepresented minorities and approximately half were first generation college students. So far, 24 of her undergraduate trainees have entered doctoral programs in clinical psychology, cognitive science, or neuroscience. Although most of her undergraduate trainees have been juniors on entry into the lab, motivated freshmen and sophomores also will gain valuable experience with guidance and mentoring.
Project overview
More than 70% of people experience a traumatic event at some point in their lifetime. Most people recover without lasting effects, but some people experience persistent stress reactions that reflect an over-activation of the brain and nervous system that in turn can cause challenges for daily functioning. In this lab we are interested in understanding such over-activation, and we use a variety of methods to try to identify how the over-activation occurs. For example, recently we showed that stress hormones measured from a saliva sample predict the degree to which that person’s brain is over-active during a brain scan several days later, which suggests that a simple saliva sample might be useful for treatment planning. The lab currently is planning fall 2025 studies, and whatever those studies might be, undergraduate trainees can expect to learn some of the following skills.
- Theoretical Skills: understand the overall purpose and research questions of the Weierich Lab, learn to read and critique scientific papers.
- Mechanical Skills: learn the mechanics of data entry, data checking, running human subjects through basic behavioral tasks, basics of experimental software, and annotating a bibliography.
- Analytic Skills: understand the variables in the current studies, generate descriptive statistics, and conduct basic statistical tests.
- Presentation Skills: concisely explain the purpose of and projects in the Weierich Lab, and present or co-present a poster or talk for an undergraduate research day.
It would be unusual in the course of a single semester for a trainee to thoroughly learn any of the advanced methods, however there might be opportunities to observe data collection and analysis of data from methods including: behavioral tasks, clinical interviews, saliva collection and assay, neuroimaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging of brain activation, diffusion weighted imaging of white matter tracts).
We do not expect new trainees to have any of these skills on entry into the lab, so we will train undergraduates in every step along the way!
Pack Research Experience Program information and application