Michael Yassa, PhD

This high-risk high-impact Center renewal proposes that unpredictable, fragmented environmental sensory signals (FRAG), constitute a previously unrecognized indicator of early-life adversity. The overarching goal of the Neuroimaging Core is to address the as yet unknown mechanistic pathways by which FRAG may lead to anhedonia and vulnerabilities to psychopathology. I am interested in understanding how our brains can store and retrieve massive amounts of information and using this knowledge ultimately to improve the human condition. My research group uses cutting-edge human neuroscience tools to understand learning and memory in healthy and diseased brains. In particular, the lab is trying to uncover ways in which our memory abilities change throughout the lifespan from childhood to older adulthood, particularly in the context of vulnerability to psychopathology, including early life adversity. My work also focuses heavily on the development of novel neuroimaging techniques for acquiring high-resolution fMRI and DTI data. My lab has demonstrated a record of accomplished and productive research projects in the fields of both psychiatric imaging (in particular depression and anxiety) as well as biomarker development for cognitive dysfunction. My lab collaborates vigorously and widely with investigators across the globe and provides support with open tool development and data banks to facilitate discovery science. Outside of my own research and imaging leadership at UCI, I also have a track record in leading large-scale international efforts to harmonize imaging techniques such as the Hippocampal Subfield Segmentation Group (HSG), which I co-founded in 2013. Finally, I serve on several advisory committees for major multisite imaging projects in the US, Europe and Japan. I am also Director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (CNLM), a renowned research institute that fosters multi-disciplinary collaborations in studies of learning and memory. Currently, there are over 70 faculty fellows of the CNLM from across the country and internationally, including the Conte Center PI Prof. Baram. Thus, my expertise and experience have prepared me to lead the Neuroimaging Core for the Conte Center’s renewal.