Teenage Riot: Analysing the Adolescent Brain
Advances in technologies in the last decade have made way for an unprecedented amount of research worldwide dedicated to studying the adolescent brain. The developing human brain undergoes an astonishing sequence of events during the teenage years that continuously shape and support several adaptive brain functions responsible for improving executive, social and motivated behaviours.
This masterclass provided a peek into this developmental window of the brain by covering some basic principles of teenage brain functions. The masterclass covered emerging concepts in tracking brain growth, and also showed how deviations in these maturational trajectories could increase the risk for a spectrum of mental health issues.
About the Psychiatrist
Bharath Holla is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS). He completed a postgraduate residency in psychiatry (MD), a postdoctoral clinical fellowship in addiction medicine, and a PhD at NIMHANS.
He is interested in bridging brain-imaging and genomics to understand the developmental underpinnings of mental illness. He is also interested in studying the risk and resilience factors that could shape adolescent brain cognitive development. In his PhD work, he examined Gene-Environment Interactions and Brain Networks underlying Externalising Behaviours and Substance Use Risk. He is a co-investigator in two of India's largest brain imaging-genetics consortia (c-VEDA and ADBS projects).
