Lisa Gorham

Program: Neurosciences

Current advisor: Cynthia Rogers, MD

Undergraduate university: Washington University, 2019

Enrollment year: 2021

Research summary
Longitudinal Trajectories of Brain Development: Parallels Between Development and Degeneration

I am a Neuroscience PhD student working in the WUNDER lab (Dr. Cynthia Rogers and Dr. Christopher Smyser). Our lab studies longitudinal trajectories of brain development in neonates and young children using MRI/fMRI, as the first few years of life are a period of rapid and significant brain growth. My project specifically is looking at how structural brain development in the first few years of life is impacted by prematurity and poverty. Additionally, I am investigating how these trajectories of macrostructural brain development relate to both underlying changes in cortical microstructure and cognitive and psychiatric outcomes later in childhood. Ideally, this work will help us better characterize how the brain develops during key periods of plasticity, and how the environment interacts with brain development to impact risk for cognitive and psychiatric difficulties.

Graduate publications
Gorham LS, Latham AR, Alexopoulos D, Kenley JK, Iannopollo E, Lean RE, Loseille D, Smyser TA, Neil JJ, Rogers CE, Smyser CD, Garcia K. 2024 Children born very preterm experience altered cortical expansion over the first decade of life. Brain Commun, 6(5):fcae318. PMCID: PMC11426356

Tooley UA, Latham A, Kenley JK, Alexopoulos D, Smyser TA, Nielsen AN, Gorham L, Warner BB, Shimony JS, Neil JJ, Luby JL, Barch DM, Rogers CE, Smyser CD. 2024 Prenatal environment is associated with the pace of cortical network development over the first three years of life. Nat Commun, 15(1):7932. PMCID: PMC11387486