Join us on Thursday, April 29th as Tiffany Ho gives a talk at brainLENS. Register here: https://bit.ly/2PxmSuL

Her talk is entitled, “Inflammatory and Glutamatergic Contributions to Adolescent Depression”

Abstract: Adolescent-onset depression is a debilitating condition often triggered by stressful experiences and characterized by alterations in connections among fronto-cingulate-limbic networks. Prior research in animals have identified inflammatory and glutamatergic processes through which stress may affect neurodevelopment, with emerging evidence that these stress-related processes are implicated in adults with depression. In this talk, I will present the rationale and data from an ongoing NIMH study: Teen Inflammation Glutamate Emotion Research (TIGER). The goal of TIGER is to test the hypothesis that inflammatory cytokines and cortical glutamate contribute to the neurodevelopmental trajectories of fronto-cingulate-limbic connections in depressed adolescents in ways that increase risk for recurrence.

Tiffany’s Bio: Dr. Tiffany Ho is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UC San Francisco and is the director of the CANDY Lab (http://candylab.ucsf.edu). Dr. Ho studied Cognitive Science as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley before earning her Ph.D. in Psychology at UC San Diego. Dr. Ho returned to the Bay Area to complete a postdoctoral fellowship in clinical neuroscience at UC San Francisco in the Department of Psychiatry and, later, in affective science at Stanford University in the Department of Psychology. From 2018-2019, Dr. Ho was an Instructor at Stanford University in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences before joining the faculty at UC San Francisco in 2019. Dr. Ho's research interests focus on understanding how experiences and perceptions of stress play a role in shaping adolescent brain development and risk for depression onset and recurrence.