Sarah Benstock
Biography
Undergraduate
University of St Andrews
Undergraduate Degree
Joint Bachelors of Science in Psychology and Biology with BPS Accreditation
Lab
Dr. Jack Hettema
Research Interests
I am interested in the genetic relationship between major depressive disorder and alcohol use disorder. Additionally, I am interested in the role of anxiety (as a symptom of depression) in this relationship, and the separate relationship between anxiety disorders and alcohol use disorder.
Abstracts and Presentations
- Bias in space and time: the reliability of pseudoneglect; Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting Abstract
- Resting State Functional Connectivity in Major Depressive Disorder with and without substance use problem; Baylor College of Medicine, SMART Program
- RSFC in Major Depression patients with comorbid SUD; Psychology, Neuroscience, Biology Student Conference, University of St Andrews
What excites you about joining Texas A&M College of Medicine for your PhD studies?
I am so excited to shift my focus of research in such a supportive environment! I have focused mainly on human research, but I am really looking forward to doing other research that still can have an impact on how we understand the human nervous system, or having the potential to completely shift my area of focus. Also, having grown up in Houston, hearing about all of the amazing things at Texas A&M, I am excited to finally be joining the community I have heard so much about.
If you could meet any scientist throughout history, who would you want to meet and why?
If I could go back and meet anyone, I would want to meet Dr. Howard Temin. Dr. Temin contributed to the discovery of reverse transcriptase and for a long time, his research was constantly rejected by the scientific community. However, he stood by his work, and he has been described as a huge force that was hard to keep up with. I would love to discuss what led him to studying genetics and virology, and why he kept at it even after he had been rejected so many times. I would ask about what drove him to keep researching something that no one believed in and how he felt about essentially changing the central principle the scientific community believed regarding viruses and DNA (he worked on Rous Sarcoma at the time).
Tell us something you are passionate about apart from research.
I love to do photography! I especially love being able to just wander around places and do landscape photography - my favorite place so far has been Prague, where I was able to spend 3 days just walking around the city and the parks with my camera.