By Michelle Jaffee
Amanda Elton, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine. Her research uses neuroimaging and behavioral tests to better understand brain differences and risk factors in psychiatric disorders and to explore why some people may be more vulnerable to addiction, while others are more resilient.
Q. What inspired you to focus on this area of neuroscience?
A. I knew I was interested in cognitive neuroscience, and during grad-school rotations at Emory I ended up in a lab focused on addiction and brain-imaging research. Talking with so many different research participants affected by addiction and their family members — and seeing their suffering — I felt inspired to focus on that problem. My PI moved to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences to start a new imaging center, and I went too and got to enjoy basically free reign of the latest imaging equipment. As a doctoral student, I continued to learn a lot by interviewing people with cocaine addiction. During my postdoc at UNC Chapel Hill, I decided to focus on expanding my neuroimaging skills, which included advanced analytical training in functional connectivity and task-based FMRI, in both healthy populations and people with various psychiatric disorders.
Q. How do you envision your research advancing psychiatric disease treatments?
I am trying to understand the process of developing — or not developing — a disorder. Our idea is that if we can help people before they develop problems, or maybe in early stages, it potentially could be more impactful than waiting to treat once a severe disorder has developed. In one study, we looked at siblings who, based on family history, were at risk of alcohol use disorder, and we compared those who developed the disorder with those who didn’t. One analysis identified deficits in attention as a key factor. That’s driving additional studies we’re doing now, examining how improving deficits in attention affects addiction severity.
Q. What’s the most exciting discovery you’ve made so far?
Using brain imaging in people at risk for addiction, we identified neural correlates of risk and resilience that involve separate brain regions or networks, suggesting that those are separate processes in the brain. In another study looking at correlates of early-life trauma in adolescents, we found that brain changes related to trauma were associated with poorer outcomes in terms of academic performance but also protective in a way and potentially made kids more resilient: Those changes were associated with less expression of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Our findings suggest that brain adaptations related to resilience aren’t necessarily always positive. They could also have detrimental effects in other domains that are related to something completely different.
Q. What makes working in your lab different than other research environments?
The trainees and students in our lab all work very well as a team, and we’re all working toward the same goal. There have been many occasions when we needed someone to step in to cover, and everyone is always willing to volunteer. Some of them help with running research studies, setting up for participants and trying to learn the process, which is really complicated. It takes a good bit of training to get there. Others are working on data analysis. We just had an undergraduate student present his findings at a lab meeting. His analysis looked at results from questionnaires we gave to participants, seeing how aspects like cravings or mood ratings changed when they took an ADHD medication versus a placebo and how those change over time.
Q. What do you enjoy doing outside of work? We go to a lot of soccer games and other activities for our daughters — ages 6, 9 and 10 — and I also like to play soccer and run. And we like to relax with our two cats, Pepper and Sumatra.