Pollak Lab
Principal Investigator: Seth D Pollak
Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison (Madison, WI)
Primary Subfield: Neuroscience
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
These experiments will further understanding about how and why child adversity leads to a broad range of mental and physical health problems. Although millions of children experience various forms of child adversity each year in the US, little is understood about how this experience influences brain-behavioral development. The General Aim of this research is to determine how environmental experience shapes neural circuitry in ways that lead to child mental health problems, and determine how these systems can be targeted to provide treatments for affected individuals. Here, we will test aspects of learning that might underlie problems in adversity-exposed children by focusing on the way unstable environments influence decision-making. Once we identify a mechanism, we will advance our basic science to a pre-clinical space by determining if these mechanisms are responsive to laboratory manipulations. The Specific Aims are to specify the mechanisms affected by child adversity that lead to developmental changes in systems needed to effectively learn to communicate, interpret, and regulate emotion in the context of social interactions. We will focus on how children learn from these exper…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R01MH061285-22: Emotion Processing: Risk for Psychopathology in Children (2026)
- 2R01MH061285-21: Emotion Processing: Risk for Psychopathology in Children (2025)
- 5R21HD108171-02: Child poverty, housing, and healthy decision-making (2024)
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