graduate student

Amanda Fath

Amanda is a graduate student in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department advised by both Mike and Guoping Feng. Amanda is interested in understanding circuit perturbations in schizophrenia that lead to cognitive and social dysfunction. Amanda completed her undergraduate studies at Wellesley College, during which time she was also an undergraduate researcher at MIT with Emery Brown and Matt Wilson, studying how various anesthetics alter brain dynamics. Subsequently, Amanda spent two years teaching high school chemistry in the Bronx, NY through Teach for America. After her time with TFA, Amanda moved to Barcelona as a Fulbright scholar in Vicky Puig’s lab studying the neural correlates of memory impairment and rescue in a model of schizophrenia. Before pursuing her doctoral studies, she completed a MA in Biotechnology at Columbia University. Amanda’s graduate studies will mainly focus on studying circuit disruptions underlying a genetic mouse model of schizophrenia mimicking specific genetic alternations found in some human patients. Amanda aims to study the neural correlates of cognitive dysfunction in this model of schizophrenia using parameterized behavioral tests. Furthermore, Amanda is currently developing a parameterized social-cognition task to understand the neural pathways involved in social decision making and how these pathways are disrupted in schizophrenia. Outside of the lab Amanda enjoys traveling the world, scuba diving, classical music, and equestrian activities.