Dr. Young earned a B.A. in Psychology and Sociology at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, and her M.A. and Ph.D in the Behavior, Cognition and Neuroscience program at American University in Washington DC
During her graduate studies, Dr. Young also received the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA), allowing her to conduct research in the Section on Neuroimaging in Mood and Anxiety Disorders at the National Institute of Mental Health.
After receiving her PhD, she was recruited by the founding director of the newly created Laureate Institute for Brain Research (LIBR) in Tulsa OK, Dr. Wayne Drevets, to complete her postdoctoral training. In 2014, Dr. Young was awarded the NIH’s Pathway to Independence K99/R00 award for her ongoing work investigating the therapeutic potential of real-time fMRI amygdala neurofeedback, and a NARSAD Young Investigator Award from Brain and Behavior Research Foundation in 2015.
In April of 2016 Dr. Young joined the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine as an assistant professor of psychiatry and was promoted to Associate professor in June of 2022. Dr. Young’s research focuses on understanding the physiological mechanisms of positive emotional information and autobiographical memory processing in healthy individuals and individuals with mood and anxiety disorders through behavioral, physiological, and functional imaging methods.
Her focus is on understanding onset and recovery from mental illness and developing new neuroscience-derived neurobehavioral interventions, including real-time fMRI and EEG neurofeedback, which target deficits in the processing of positive stimuli in patients with mood-disorders.
