معرفی
Helena Rutherford is an Associate Professor in the Child Study Center and the Department of Psychology at Yale University. Her research focuses on the neurobiology of parenting, maternal mental health, and developmental neuroscience. She holds appointments in the Yale School of Medicine and is affiliated with the Center for Brain & Mind Health and the Neuroscience Research Training Program.
Education: PhD in Psychology (Bangor University, 2008), postdoctoral training at Yale School of Medicine (2010) and University College London (2012). Her work investigates neural mechanisms underlying parental behavior, stress reactivity, and emotion regulation in mothers, particularly those with substance use disorders.
Research interests include maternal psychological risk, infant cue perception, and the interplay between parental mentalization and child development. She leads studies on the long-term cognitive impacts of motherhood and the neural plasticity associated with caregiving.
Notable contributions include publications on protective effects of parenthood on brain aging and the need for standardized assessments of pregnancy-specific trauma. Collaborations involve interdisciplinary teams across Yale’s neuroscience and psychiatry departments.