Rachel Zsido, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Psychiatry
Dr. Rachel Zsido is a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Zsido received her B.A. in Neurobiology from Harvard University. As a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Fellow, she researched sex differences in stress and anxiety-related disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her B.A. thesis, “Contributions of estradiol and hormonal contraceptive use to sex differences during fear extinction recall”, received the Best Manuscript Award from The Harvard Undergraduate Research Journal. Dr. Zsido then completed her Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. During her doctoral studies, she used multimodal neuroimaging techniques (MRI, EEG, PET) to investigate how sex steroids shape brain structure, function, and chemistry across the lifespan; with emphasis on women’s increased risk for depression and dementia. She was the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Joachim Herz Foundation Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Life Science, the Dr. Margarete Blank Publication Prize and the Otto Hahn Medal for noteworthy scientific work in the field of sex and gender medicine.
Under the mentorship of Dr. Jill Goldstein, Dr. Zsido now applies a sex differences lens to investigate how prenatal immune programming, sex steroids, and brain stress circuitry interact to contribute to the shared pathophysiology underlying three chronic diseases: major depressive disorder (MDD), cardiovascular disease (CVD), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Given that CVD and MDD are both significant risk factors for AD, and that sex differences in MDD occur earlier in life,
Dr. Zsido is especially interested in how emotion dysregulation and depression may serve as preclinical risk factors for identifying and intervening in potential CVD and AD development later in life. In addition to her research, Dr. Zsido has a strong interest in femtech and how it can be used to enhance scientific studies and improve healthcare standards for everyone. As women are at increased risk for MDD, for the co-occurrence of MDD with CVD, and for AD, she believes that femtech may provide an interdisciplinary framework for addressing sex-driven differences in pathology and supporting healthy cognitive aging across the female lifespan.
Selected Publications
Effects of Hormonal Contraceptives on Mood: A Focus on Emotion Recognition and Reactivity, Reward Processing, and Stress Response. Lewis CA, Kimmig AS, Zsido RG, Jank A, Derntl B, Sacher J. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2019 Nov 7;21(11):115. doi: 10.1007/s11920-019-1095-z. PMID: 31701260
Using positron emission tomography to investigate hormone-mediated neurochemical changes across the female lifespan: implications for depression. Zsido RG, Villringer A, Sacher J. Int Rev Psychiatry. 2017 Dec;29(6):580-596. doi: 10.1080/09540261.2017.1397607. Epub 2017 Dec 4.PMID: 29199875
Testosterone imbalance may link depression and increased body weight in premenopausal women. Stanikova D, Zsido RG, Luck T, Pabst A, Enzenbach C, Bae YJ, Thiery J, Ceglarek U, Engel C, Wirkner K, Stanik J, Kratzsch J, Villringer A, Riedel-Heller SG, Sacher J. Transl Psychiatry. 2019 Jun 7;9(1):160. doi: 10.1038/s41398-019-0487-5. PMID: 31175272
Association of Estradiol and Visceral Fat With Structural Brain Networks and Memory Performance in Adults. Zsido RG, Heinrich M, Slavich GM, Beyer F, Kharabian Masouleh S, Kratzsch J, Raschpichler M, Mueller K, Scharrer U, Löffler M, Schroeter ML, Stumvoll M, Villringer A, Witte AV, Sacher J. JAMA Netw Open. 2019 Jun 5;2(6):e196126. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.6126. PMID: 31225892
One-week escitalopram intake alters the excitation-inhibition balance in the healthy female brain. Zsido RG, Molloy EN, Cesnaite E, Zheleva G, Beinhölzl N, Scharrer U, Piecha FA, Regenthal R, Villringer A, Nikulin VV, Sacher J. Hum Brain Mapp. 2022 Apr 15;43(6):1868-1881. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25760. Epub 2022 Jan 22. PMID: 35064716
Contribution of estradiol levels and hormonal contraceptives to sex differences within the fear network during fear conditioning and extinction. Hwang MJ, Zsido RG, Song H, Pace-Schott EF, Miller KK, Lebron-Milad K, Marin MF, Milad MR. BMC Psychiatry. 2015 Nov 18;15:295. doi: 10.1186/s12888-015-0673-9. PMID: 26581193