Achievement

IGERT student Amy Byrd, working with Drs. Rolf Loeber and Dustin Pardini at the University of Pittsburgh, studies genetic and neural correlates of violent behavior in young males. This highly cross-disciplinary work combines assessment of behavioral phenotypes (e.g., interpersonal callousness, and emotional dysregulation), genotyping (looking for the low-activity variant of the monoamine oxidase A gene), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of amygdala activity in response to neutral, angry, and fearful faces to assess implicit emotional processing. The extensive cross-training that enabled Byrd to conduct this work was made possible through her IGERT funding. Recently she completed a meta-analysis of a collection of prior studies showing that childhood maltreatment heightens risk for male antisocial behavior more strongly in individuals carrying the low-activity MAOA gene. This work will appear in the journal Biological Psychiatry.