Welcome to the BRIDGE Lab (Bridging Research across Imaging, Development, Genetics, and Emerging Mental Health) within the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego! Our research bridges multiple scales of neuroscience to better understand the development of adolescent psychiatric disorders. We use various cutting-edge statistical techniques to analyze multimodal neuroimaging (structural, multi-shell diffusion, task-based and resting state functional MRI), genomic, and behavioral data. Our current projects focus on neurobiological premorbid and maintenance factors of eating disorders and psychosis, but we welcome the opportunity to work on related conditions such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and mood disorders. We strongly believe in working within an interdisciplinary setting, including collaborations with neuroscientists, engineers, clinicians, and individuals with lived experience of mental health disorders to strengthen the impact of our work.
Check out our team's latest work, published in Molecular Psychiatry, which mapped multivariate brain-behavior patterns in a sample of adolescent girls with an eating disorder.
Our key research questions include:
How do genetic factors shape the brain and contribute to psychiatric traits?
How do deviations from typical brain developmental trajectories contribute to mental health concerns in adolescence?
What biological mechanisms increase someone's vulnerability or resilience to a mental health disorder in adolescence?
Are there specific modalities (for example, across genetic, brain imaging, self-report, or cognitive measures) that can improve our prediction of a mental health disorder in adolescence?
Learn more about our team, ongoing projects and recent publications. Don't hesitate to contact us if you are interested in joining the lab or want to know more about what we do!