P&N's Ahmad Hariri talks about the teen brain and decision making on NPR's the 1A. In the episode he discusses how changes in the adolescent brain can lead to violence.
Check it out here:
https://the1a.org/audio/#/shows/2018-01-11/a-new-show-goes-inside-teenagers-brains/113223/@00:00 …
Dr. Hariri is Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, where he is also the Director of the Laboratory of NeuroGenetics.
Throughout his career Dr. Hariri has sought to systematically integrate available and emerging research tools to study the biology of individual differences in complex behavioral traits and related risk for psychopathology. Using human neuroimaging, especially functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Dr. Hariri and his colleagues have begun to identify how variability in brain function contributes to individual differences in complex behavioral traits. In parallel, they have combined fMRI with drug challenge studies and positron emission tomography (PET) to identify how variability in brain chemistry influences these individual differences in brain function. Against this background, Dr. Hariri and his team use molecular genetics to understand the origins of variability in brain chemistry as well as to model how such emergent variability impacts behaviorally and clinically relevant brain function. A translational aim of Dr. Hariri's research is to help develop biomarkers that predict risk for psychopathology and inform the development of more effective and individually tailored therapies.
Lab website:
Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
