Her Stem Space

“It’s always been fascinating to me how psychotic disorders that involve significant impairment in the perception of reality can occur in an individual who, in other domains of functioning, including cognitive domains; is coherent and average or above.”

– Elaine F. Walker

Elaine Walker, a Ph.D. holder in Clinical Psychology, is a distinguished researcher at Emory University, where she has taught for over 30 years. She runs a research lab supported by the National Institute of Mental Health and other private foundations that focuses on risk factors for serious mental diseases, including psychosis. Her research focuses on behavioural and neurobiological risk factors for psychosis, with the goal of improving our ability to anticipate psychotic diseases and understand the neurobiological processes that lead up to their onset. Walker has written five books and over 350 scientific articles and has received various honours, including the NIMH Career Development Award, the WT Grant Faculty/Scholar Award, and the SRP Lifetime Achievement Award. She is also a Fellow of the American Association for the  Advancement of Science.

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HER CONTRIBUTION IN CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SCHIZOPHRENIA RESEARCH

Walker and her team concentrate on prodromes, which are symptoms that might occur before the clinical start of schizophrenia. During this key time, researchers examine patients’ brain growth, hormonal development, cognitive development, and stress sensitivity. Approximately 25-30% of these individuals acquire psychotic illnesses within a few years, although the majority do not.

Monitoring teenage mental health problems can be stressful and perplexing for both patients and parents. Parents frequently worry about their child having many diagnoses over time, which can be frustrating. A common scenario is for a patient to be diagnosed with ADHD in childhood, then exhibit symptoms of sadness and anxiety in early adolescence, and finally evidence of approaching psychotic symptoms in mid-adolescence.

Walker adds that when parents get a more complete picture of their teenager’s experiences, it restores their faith in mental health care and prepares them for behavioural changes that may occur as the child ages. According to scientific study, most kids develop as they enter early adulthood, so there is excellent reason to be patient and positive.

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CONFRONTING MYTHS ABOUT MENTAL ILLNESS

Throughout history, myths and misconceptions about the brain and mental diseases have persisted. A few decades ago, the blame for a child’s mental illness was placed on poor parenting—particularly shaming mothers. This emerged from the psychoanalytic movement in psychiatry, which saw psychiatric problems as the outcome of negative childhood experiences. However, as scientific evidence accumulated, conceptions linking schizophrenogenic parents and other notions of poor parenting to schizophrenia faded.

Walker collaborates with a diverse group of professionals to understand psychiatric diseases. One study used family home movies to find information regarding psychotic patients and their histories. The researchers wanted to see if early evidence of neuromotor abnormalities could be detected in those who later acquired schizophrenia or other psychotic diseases. To answer questions regarding antecedents in infancy, researchers needed access to historical material from that developmental time, such as family movies. This method has helped researchers comprehend the intricacies of the brain and mental diseases.

Gene therapy and genomics play critical roles in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of brain illnesses. However, there not a single gene for schizophrenia or any other kind of psychosis, making it difficult to explain its existence through the mix of hundreds of genes. As more gene studies are conducted, researchers are learning that hereditary predisposition to psychotic diseases is frequently caused by spontaneous genetic changes. These mutations are not passed down from either parent and are found in no other biological family member. Instead, they appear during the development of germ cells in the zygote and fetus.

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HER LEGACY AND INFLUENCE

Walker is a well-known psychologist and neuroscientist and she has made significant contributions to the field of psychology and neuroscience. She received the 2013 APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for her research on visual processing in psychopathology, which prompted Michael Green, a professor-in-residence at the University of California, Los Angeles, to investigate the visual perceptual abnormalities associated with schizophrenia. Green proposed a cascade model in which a person with schizophrenia has difficulty with visual processing when a stimulus is initially delivered, limiting their ability to detect social cues. This social cognitive deficit has been connected to poor performance in daily living and relationships.

Deborah Walder, an associate professor of psychology at Brooklyn College, was influenced by her mentor’s research on the role of sex hormones in psychotic susceptibility. Walder has been researching sex-specific characteristics that may explain some of the disparities between men and women in the prevalence, severity, and course of schizophrenia and other psychotic diseases. Her first findings suggest that gonadal hormones such as progesterone, which fluctuate throughout the menstrual cycle, may play a buffering effect.

Walker’s most prolific research came in the 1990s, when she began researching childhood home recordings of adult schizophrenic patients and discovered that many of them had distinct motor deficiencies. Vijay Mittal, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado in Boulder, pursued this line of inquiry, looking for similar apparent motor abnormalities in the years preceding the disorder’s development, typically in adolescence. Mittal discovered that hyperkinesia, or unusually elevated muscle activity in the face and upper body, was the strongest predictor of conversion. He is now analyzing the brains of prodromal participants in an attempt to identify a reliable biomarker for conversion.

Walker’s past mentees’ diverse research interests demonstrate the depth and importance of her work, as well as the enthusiasm she has instilled in her pupils.

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Works Cited

“Elaine F. Walker.” Emory University, psychology.emory.edu/home/people/faculty/walker-elaine-f.html#:~:text=Walker’s%20research%20 focuses%20on%20the,and%20prevention%20 of%20 metal%20 illness.

Drew, Amy. “Uncovering Neurodevelopmental Origins of Psychosis and Adolescent Mental Health: A Tribute to Elaine F. Walker.” Association for Psychological Science – APS, 2 July 2013, www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/uncovering-neurodevelopmental-origins-of-psychosis-and-adolescent-mental-health-a-tribute-to-elaine-f-walker.

“Psychology professor Elaine Walker’s ‘life-changing’ impact honoured with the Cuttino Award for Excellence in Mentoring | Emory University | Atlanta GA.” Emory University, news.emory.edu/stories/2023/05/er_commencement_award_cuttino_walker_03-05-2023/story.html.

“Elaine F Walker.” Loop, loop.frontiersin.org/people/9695/publications.

“Elaine F. Walker’s research works | Emory University and other places.” ResearchGate, 1 July 2024, www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Elaine-F-Walker-38505905.

About the Author

My name is Isidora, and I am a rising sophomore in high school. My interest in STEM is mainly because of my fascination with abnormal psychology and psychoanalysis!