Angelina Heller L&S Biological Sciences
Cognitive associations with blood-brain barrier permeability
The blood-brain barrier is a network of cells that form a barrier between blood and brain tissue. This serves to protect the brain from pathogens and excess metabolites like glutamate or amino acids. The blood-brain barrier controls what compounds from the blood enter the brain, but sometimes, this system weakens. Increased blood-brain barrier permeability has been associated with common psychiatric disorders such as ADHD, anxiety, and depression. My summer research project explores how cognitive traits related to these psychiatric disorders relate to blood-brain barrier permeability.
Particularly, this project investigates how impulsive traits associate with blood-brain barrier diffusivity across age. The role of age, as well as the role of cognitive traits with blood-brain barrier diffusivity, is currently unexplored. To investigate the role of the blood-brain barrier compared to other brain features, such as brain volume and thickness, I will also correlate these physical brain features with cognitive scores. This will give us a multidimensional understanding of the brain and cognitive traits.
Message To Sponsor
Thank you so much for supporting my research interests in the summer of 2026. I am extraordinarily grateful for the ability to pursue one of my long-standing passions: mental health. Mental health and neuroscience research has been extremely important to me, growing up in a community largely affected by related struggles. I believe cognitive and mental health research accelerates well-being and saves lives, and I’m grateful to be part of this effort.