Carolina Makowski
University of California-San Diego, CA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder, can have severe health consequences, poor treatment outcomes and even cause death. They most often begin in adolescence, a time when the brain is changing rapidly.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Genetics
- Topics
eating disorders
anorexia nervosa
bulimia nervosa
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2028
What they work on
- Identify behavioral and neuroimaging correlates of eating disorders in youth from the ABCD Study (ages 11–14) and in a clinical sample of adolescent girls in treatment (ages 13–18), using measures of brain shape and whole-brain microstructure.
- Combine polygenic risk scores, which estimate inherited risk from many genetic variants, for eating disorders and related conditions with longitudinal brain imaging and behavioral data from ages 9 to 17 to model eating disorder onset.
- Test whether predictors found in the general-population ABCD sample generalize to a clinical sample of patients aged 14–19 with more severe eating disorders.
More about the research
Their causes remain largely unknown. Most studies look at one diagnosis at a time, even though the disorders share genetic risk and symptoms.
Why it matters
Identifying genetic, brain and behavioral warning signs that appear before an eating disorder begins could help clinicians spot at-risk adolescents earlier. It may also guide assessments and treatment plans early in the illness, when outcomes for anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder are still poor.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Pamela Keel
Florida State University, FL·Psychology
Compare eating disorder prevalence and symptom scores across five random cohorts of college students surveyed in 1982, 1992, 2002, 2012 and 2022 to measure generational change.
Chandra Sripada
University of Michigan, MI·Neuroscience
Test whether reduced efficiency of evidence accumulation in bipolar disorder comes from weaker flexible rewiring of brain networks, comparing 130 patients and 130 healthy adults with behavioral tasks and task-based neuroimaging.
Alexander Weigard
University of Michigan, MI·Psychology·Early-career
Map the typical maturational trajectory of efficiency of evidence accumulation (EEA), a model-derived measure of how well the brain gathers information for decisions, and its relations to other abilities, across four large longitudinal neuroimaging datasets.
The school
University of California-San Diego: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 637 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.