2009 Young Investigator Award Winner

Katarina Dedovic, MSc / Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Douglas Mental Health University Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, CANADA

Katarina Dedovic is completing her PhD training under the guidance of Dr. Jens Pruessner, at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Katarina’s research undertakings aim at examining processes underlying stress regulation in healthy individuals, as well as vulnerable populations. Her PhD project focuses on investigating individual differences in susceptibility to develop depression from a neuroimaging perspective by examining abnormalities in brain structure and function. To this end, Katarina has investigated a sample of healthy young adults with a range of depressive tendencies, exploring specifically the association between natural variation in hippocampal volume and important depressive risk factors, such as stressful life events, sex, personality, and cognitive biases. In order to examine brain function with respect to two main areas that are of issue in individuals suffering from depression, information processing and reactivity to stressful situations, she exposed the study participants to an attentional bias task and the Montreal Imaging Stress Task in the scanner. Furthermore, she has investigated Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis regulation in this sample of subjects by sampling both basal and stress-related cortisol secretion. Katarina’s findings on the HPA axis functioning in this sample and the influence of psychological variables on these measures are featured in a poster at this year’s meeting.