Student Research Assistant Internship in the Pediatric Emotion & Resilience Lab (PEARL) Available Immediately!
The PEARL aims to openly connect a child's emotional life experience with human biology. Mood problems in children are brain based, and we strive to understand the neural circuit dysfunction that underlies mood problems through critical sensitive periods in brain development. We take a holistic biopsychosocial approach to understanding and treating mood problems among youth that encompasses many aspects of childrens’ lives. We hope this multidisciplinary approach will lead to a greater understanding of how to treat mood problems and lead to happier and healthier youth.
Student Research Assistants would have the opportunity to do any combination of the following in the PEARL lab:
***We ask that our students commit to at least 6 hours a week to our lab and commit to an entire school year. If you are able to do that and are interested in getting involved in the work done in our lab, please email your CV/resume and cover letter to Melissa Packer: mpacker2@stanford.edu. This internship is unpaid but can be taken for course credit or simply for excellent professional and career development. For more information about the lab and its director, Dr. Manpreet Singh, please visit med.stanford.edu/pedmood and https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/manpreet-singh and also read the project descriptions below:
Project Title: Risk and Resilience in Youth at Familial Risk for Mood Disorders
Project Information: Have you ever come across people with mood problems who worry about passing on their struggles to their children? What can we recommend that concerned parents and kids do in order to promote childhood resilience—to equip kids with tools to cope with life’s stressors in adaptive, healthy ways? Get involved in this study, and you will come to better understand why some children of parents with mood disorders do not go on to struggle with those issues while others do!
The goal of this study is to discover factors that make youth either vulnerable or resilient to developing mood symptoms. Children (8-17 years) of families with and without histories of Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar Disorder participate in clinical interviews, cognitive tasks, MRIs, and blood/saliva tests. We are starting to follow up with families participating in the study over the next 2-5 years to track neural and behavioral markers of risk over time and see if we can base any clinical outcomes on these measures.
Project Title: Neurodevelopmental Features of Sexual Dimorphism in Pediatric Psychopathology
Project Information: Would you like to work on big data and develop new models of the brain? Are you interested in looking at psychiatric illness through a developmental lens? For the analytically hungry, we have genetic, brain, behavioral, and cognitive data for numerous kids.
One area that we seek to understand is why girls sometimes more frequently experience depression and anxiety while boys experience attention deficits and hyperactivity. Using data from 10,000 kids in the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, our team is conducting exciting analyses to discover how the brain’s structure and function might explain apparent differences between boys and girls.
Project Title: Arousal Induced by Medication Study (AIMS)
Project Information: Have you ever come across parents who have children with mood issues and are debating whether or not to have them take medication for those issues? Ever curious about better understanding the potential risks versus benefits of prescribed antidepressant medication in youth? Or more generally, are you looking to gain expertise in conducting clinical drug trials?
The goal of this multi-site trial is to evaluate the benefits and safety of antidepressant and psychotherapy treatment in teens who have a family history of Bipolar Disorder and therefore could be at risk specifically for antidepressant-related dysfunctional emotional arousal. These youth complete behavioral, clinical, physiological, and genetic assessments, as well as MRI scans of the brain.
Project Title: Measuring Overeating and Mood Effects on Neurobehaviors ThroUgh Maturation: (MOMENTUM)
Are you interested in better understanding mind and body interactions?
This study aims to elucidate the relationship between mood and appetite. Youth 9-17 years old who are struggling to maintain a healthy weight and experiencing sad moods are invited to have an MRI scan at two time points over the course of two years to examine neural reward networks that are activated while the child plays a game in the scanner. Participants are also clinically evaluated for insulin sensitivity and symptoms of depression at baseline, 6 months, and 24 months.
Project Title: Janssen
This is a NEW study that invites adolescents and young adults (15-25 years) who have a parent with a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder (BD) to provide clinical, genetic, and other biological information at 6-month intervals over 24 months. The goal of the study is to evaluate early risk markers that are targets for treatment with the overall goal of delaying or preventing the onset of bipolar disorder in at-risk youth.
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