SPEAKER: Fatemeh Haghighi, Ph.D.
Professor of Neuroscience
Director of the Laboratory of Medical Epigenetics
Icahn School of Medicine
Mount Sinai
TITLE: Traumatic Brain Injury: Acute and Chronic Transcriptional Regulatory Changes and Clinical Correlates
BIO:
Dr. Haghighi is a Professor of Neuroscience and the Director of the Laboratory of Medical Epigenetics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the James J. Peters VA Medical Center. Her research is focused on understanding how epigenetic mechanisms contribute to the risk of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. Her studies have characterized regional and cell specific epigenetic neuronal profiles during human brain development important in understanding neuropathological alterations in depression and suicidal behavior. Her current work is interested in how physical and/or psychosocial stress can induce epigenetic abnormalities that later lead to neuropathological and psychiatric symptoms. Physical stressors like traumatic brain injury can enhance or contribute to these abnormalities, and psychosocial stressors often precipitate depression and heightened suicide risk. Applying both genomics and computational approaches, her laboratory use a combination of animal and human studies to identify genes and genetic pathways that undergo sustained transcriptional regulatory changes in response to such environmental insults. She is also a Principle Investigator on awards from the National Institute of Health and the US Department of Veteran Affairs.
