Brittany Taylor, Ph.D., is the Director of the Neurodiversity Laboratory in the Institute for Human Neuroscience. Dr. Taylor began her training at Colorado State University where, under the supervision of Drs. William Gavin and Patricia Davies, she used electroencephalography (EEG) to explore sensory and cognitive functioning in a variety of populations, and received in-depth training in advanced statistical modeling techniques. Her work primarily focused on developing and testing comprehensive models of neurophysiological processing serving higher-order cognition in late childhood and early adolescence.
After graduating in 2017, Dr. Taylor pursued two postdoctoral fellowships. The first (2017-2018) was in the Center for Neurobehavioral Research at Boys Town National Research Hospital with Dr. James Blair. During this tenure, Dr. Taylor used structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (s/fMRI) to explore the neuropathological underpinnings of clinically-diagnosed anxiety disorders in adolescence.
Dr. Taylor then took on a new training position at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Dr. Tony Wilson's lab. There, Dr. Taylor learned a new neuroimaging technique, magnetoencephalography (MEG), and expanded her work exploring individual variability in neurocognitive development among children and adolescents.
As the Director of the Neurodiversity Laboratory, Dr. Taylor leverages the strengths of each of the neuroimaging and statistical techniques that she learned in her diverse training to map the complex interplay of environment, brain, and behavior. She is currently studying how common environmental toxins impact brain structure and function, and ultimately shape cognition and behavior in youth.
Research Interests
Dr. Taylor's research interests span a wide range of individual differences that contribute to brain structure and function, and ultimately shape cognition and behavior in development. Her portfolio of research includes age- and sex-related changes in neurophysiological functioning, the impact of pubertal hormones on developmental trajectories, exploration of the unique and combined effects of diverse psychological symptoms on brain structure ranging from subclinical-to-clinical levels, and more recently, the effects of environmental toxins and biological mechanisms of inflammation on neurophysiology. Ultimately, Dr. Taylor's work seeks to understand the intricate web of individual differences that contribute to unique patterns of neurodevelopment.
Education/Training
- Jan 2021 – Present: Director of the Neurodiversity Laboratory, Boys Town National Research Hospital (Boys Town, NE)
- Sept 2018 – Dec 2020: Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Dr. Tony Wilson's lab (Omaha, NE)
- June 2017 – Sept 2018: Postdoctoral Fellow at Boys Town National Research Hospital, Dr. James Blair's lab (Boys Town, NE)
- Aug 2014 – Aug 2017: Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Sciences at Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO)
Dissertation:
Phases of systematic brain processing differentially relate to cognitive constructs of attention and executive function in typically-developing children: A latent variable analysis - Aug 2012 – Aug 2014: M.S. in Family and Developmental Studies at Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO)
Thesis:The test-retest reliability of the contingent negative variation (CNV) in children and adults before and after removing aberrant CNV segments
Selected Recent Publications
Taylor, B. K., Eastman, J. A., Frenzel, M. R., Embury, E. M., Wang, Y-P., Badura Brack, A., Stephen, J. M., Calhoun, V. D., & Wilson, T. W. (In press). Subclinical levels of anxiety and post-traumatic stress predict rate of cortical thinning during adolescence. The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2020.11.020
Fung, M. H., Taylor, B. K., Frenzel, M. R., Eastman, J. A., Wang, Y.-P., Calhoun, V. D., Stephen, J. M., & Wilson, T. W. (2020). Pubertal testosterone tracks the developmental trajectory of neural oscillatory activity serving visuospatial attention.
Cerebral Cortex,
30, 5960-5971.
https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaa169
Taylor, B. K., Frenzel, M., Eastman, J. A., Wiesman, A. I., Wang, Y-P., Calhoun, V. D., Stephen, J. M., & Wilson, T. W. (2020) Reliability of the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery in Children and Adolescents: A three-year longitudinal examination. Psychological Medicine, 9 1-10.
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0033291720003487
Taylor, B. K., Embury, C. M., Heinrichs-Graham, E., Frenzel, M., Wiesman, A. I., Wang, Y-P., Calhoun, V. D., Stephen, J. M., & Wilson, T. W. Neural oscillatory dynamics serving abstract reasoning in typically-developing children and adolescents. (2020). Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 42, 100770.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100770
Taylor, B. K., Gavin, W. J., Grimm, K. J., Prince, M. A., Lin, M-H. & Davies, P. L. (2019). Towards a Unified Model of Event-Related Potentials as Phases of Stimulus-to-Response Processing.
Neuropsychologia, 132, 107128.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107128
