Tricia King, PhD

As a developmental clinical neuropsychologist, my clinical research interests examine the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the cognitive and social-emotional abilities of individuals with neurological conditions across the lifespan. My research has a specific emphasis on examining the biopsychosocial factors that contribute to optimal executive and emotional functioning following neurological injury during childhood. Executive and emotional functions are of interest to me because of the importance of these skills in daily life. I have observed the significant disruption in the development of these skills in children and devastating loss of these skills in adults following frontal-subcortical system lesions, including disruption of white matter pathways. My focus on adaptive functioning capabilities grew out of my postdoctoral training with adults with vascular dementia, and subsequently my clinical research with adult survivors of childhood brain tumors. Both sets of patients and their families reported significant concern about independent living skills that often superseded cognitive concerns. My interest in these brain-behavior relationships is broad, spanning a wide range of research methods, psychological domains, and populations. Three primary foci of my research program are studies of survivors of childhood brain tumors, neuroimaging studies of executive functions, and psychophysiological and neuroimaging studies of emotion.

The major focus of my lab is examining the adaptive functioning of adult survivors of childhood brain tumors. We are evaluating a group of young adults who are in their twenties and who were followed longitudinally as children beginning at the time of diagnosis and treatment. The goal is to identify the childhood and current adult predictors of adaptive functioning. In particular, we are interested in identifying executive and emotional functioning correlates as well as neuroimaging correlates of adult survivors’ adaptive living skills. The American Cancer Society (ACS) has awarded me a Research Scholar Grant for this program of research.