Carina Heller, Ph.D.
@carinaheller.bsky.social
Postdoctoral Research Fellow Women‘s health | Neuroendocrinology | Neuroimaging (she/her)
📣 📣 I am beyond excited to announce I will be joining the Yale Dept. of Psychology as an Assistant Professor in July 2027! Deepest gratitude to my colleagues and mentors, without whom this would not have been possible. More to come—I'll be recruiting students and hiring staff this coming year!
🚨Preprint Alert 🧠 Our new preprint „Menarche onset is an inflection point for mental health and brain development“ is now online! 👉 Preprint available here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🚨 New preprint alert! 🚨 Transdiagnostic latent factor models of psychopathology are widely assumed to improve brain-behaviour associations. So we decided to test this directly and found that they don't. A short 🧵 Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/10
Hormonal milieu influences whole-brain structural dynamics across the menstrual cycle using dense sampling in multiple individuals @carinaheller.bsky.social, @uni-jena.de, @umn-midb.bsky.social, @icsantabarbara.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Hormonal milieu influences whole-brain structural dynamics across the menstrual cycle using dense sampling in multiple individuals - Nature Neuroscience
Heller et al. showed dense longitudinal imaging in four females, including one with endometriosis and one using oral contraceptives, and the finding that different hormonal milieus influence widespread brain volume changes linked to progesterone or estradiol.
nature.com
🌊 Carina Heller & co explored brain volume changes across typical and atypical menstrual cycles. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
When @laurapritschet.bsky.social & Pavel Shapturenka set out to build the 28&Me + 28&He datasets, I don't think any of us could've predicted the spectacularly creative ways the datasets would be used years later. That's the power of open science. 👇🏼
Thrilled to share that I have been awarded a @bbrfoundation.bsky.social Young Investigator Grant!
The Ann S. Bowers Women's Brain Health Initiative@bowers-wbhi.bsky.social · 12mo agoCongrats, Dr. Carina Heller, PhD @carinaheller.bsky.social & thanks to @bbrfoundation.bsky.social. Carina received the 2025 BBRF Young Investigator Grant, enabling her to further investigate the impact of hormonal contraceptives use in adolescence, especially for mental health. #Neuroscience
🧠 Modulating salience network connectivity through olfactory nerve stimulation. Now out in Translational Psychiatry! 👉 Check out the paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Modulating salience network connectivity through olfactory nerve stimulation - Translational Psychiatry
Translational Psychiatry - Modulating salience network connectivity through olfactory nerve stimulation
nature.com
The beginning of the irregular cycles movement!! Get round it!☺️🧠💪🏼
Carina Heller, Ph.D.@carinaheller.bsky.social · 12mo agoWe wrote a piece for @naturemedicine.bsky.social 🧠 Menstrual cycle irregularities can be both cause and consequence of wide-ranging health issues. Embracing this complexity could reveal novel brain–body interactions and advance neuroscience. Check out our commentary www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We wrote a piece for @naturemedicine.bsky.social 🧠 Menstrual cycle irregularities can be both cause and consequence of wide-ranging health issues. Embracing this complexity could reveal novel brain–body interactions and advance neuroscience. Check out our commentary www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Why menstrual cycle irregularities belong in brain research - Nature Medicine
The menstrual cycle requires tight orchestration between the brain and body, and irregularities can be both the cause and the consequence of wide-ranging health issues. Embracing this complexity, inst...
nature.com
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present our research on the impact of hormonal contraceptives intake on brain structure in an adolescent sample 🫶
Liisa Galea@liisagalea.bsky.social · last yr.Next up @carinaheller.bsky.social on hormonal contraceptives and 300M people use HC worldwide. Not just used for HMB, acne, PCOS, endometriosis etc. it is imp for researchers to investigate how HC impact the brain (& other physiological systems). BEYOND fertility!!
To better understand how oral contraceptives affect the brain, neuroscientist Carina Heller volunteered herself as a subject. She plans to make her data—from her many brain scans, blood tests and more—openly available. www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin... #neuroskyence #neuroscience
Dose, scan, repeat: Tracking the neurological effects of oral contraceptives
We know little about how the brain responds to oral contraceptives, despite their widespread use. I am committed to changing that: I scanned my brain 75 times over the course of a year and plan to…
thetransmitter.org
