Aditii Wakhlu, B.S.
Clinical Research Coordinator
Aditii graduated from Marquette University in May 2023 with a B.S. in Biomedical Sciences with a concentration in Neuroscience. While at Marquette University, Aditii worked for two years as an undergraduate research assistant in the Translational Affective Neuroscience Lab, examining skin conductance responses in relation to fear and reward conditioning, and measures of intolerance of uncertainty. During this time, she gained significant experience in the collection and preprocessing of physiological and neuroimaging data. In addition, she worked for two years in Dr. Matthew Hearing’s lab in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and consequently completed her senior thesis studying (using chemogenetics approaches) the role of cortico-striatal subcircuits in a rodent model of cognitive flexibility. Encountering sex differences in the findings of this project, Aditii developed a keen interest in the study of sex differences in brain circuitry.
With an ardent interest in psychiatry and neuroscience, Aditii hopes to pursue a career as a physician-scientist in the future. Aditii has a strong background in fMRI research and her interest in translation research involving sex differences is a great asset to the SCORE study.
About the U54 SCORE program: The scientific mission of the MGH-Harvard-CO SCORE (U54MH118919) is to identify stress and immune pathway abnormalities, beginning in fetal development, that have adverse consequences for sex differences in brain circuitry implicated in major depressive disorder (MDD), autonomic and neurovascular dysfunction, and risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). We are facilitating transdisciplinary, translational collaborations among basic and clinical investigators to enhance our understanding of sex differences in the comorbidity of MDD and CVD and develop a novel non-invasive neuromodulation therapy targeted to the neural-cardiac interface in a sex-selective manner. Further, we aim to serve as an interdisciplinary resource to train and disseminate findings about sex differences in MDD, autonomic dysregulation, and cardiovascular risk to the scientific and medical communities, policy makers, and the public.