Amanda R. Bolbecker, Ph.D.
Young Investigator

Dr. Amanda Bolbecker received a Ph.D. in psychobiology at Purdue University, where she studied neural timing at the cellular level. Because of her strong interest in psychopathology, she accepted an Indiana University Clinical Science T32 NIMH Training Program Postdoctoral Fellowship, which is specifically oriented to training translational researchers who will attack problems in psychopathology with methods and models drawn from different neurobehavioral approaches. Dr. Bolbecker is currently an Associate Research Scientist in Indiana University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

Her current laboratory focuses on the psychophysiology of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Both of these disorders are associated with disturbances of timing, circadian rhythms, and regulation of phasic behaviors, but the cellular basis for these disturbances is not well understood. Over the past 2 years, her research program has specifically focused on the hypothesis that primary symptoms of bipolar disorder, e.g. severe emotional and behavioral dysregulation, may be generated by abnormalities in the temporal coordination of information processing. Converging evidence points to the cerebellum in particular as a critical locus in the pathophysiology of bipolar disorder. Results from her research using the eyeblink conditioning task, which tests the functional integrity of the cerebellum, indicates that bipolar disorder patients demonstrate significant impairment on this cerebellar-mediated timing task. This research has generated a manuscript that is currently under review and forms the foundation for future research that her Young Investigator grant will help to fund.

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