Carrie J. McAdams, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, Brain-Body Perceptions Research
Dr. Carrie McAdams is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry with Tenure at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. McAdams received her BA, magna cum laude, with double majors in biochemistry and behavioral science from Rice University. She received a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Baylor College of Medicine in 1998 and her M.D. with honors in 2000 and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. She has published extensively in the field of attention and visual neurophysiology.
In 2006, Dr. McAdams shifted her research focus from basic animal models of cognition to the neuroscience of mental illness, concurrently beginning her residency in psychiatry at UT Southwestern. During her residency at UT Southwestern, Dr. McAdams received the Chairman’s Research Award for her paper on neuroimaging of social identity in eating disorders and established a research program focused on understanding brain function in outpatients with eating disorders. Her primary expertise is the utilization of cognitive neuroimaging to pinpoint neural circuits related to psychopathology.
A committed physician-scientist, Dr. McAdams currently leads the Brain-Body Perceptions Team. Her program focuses on determining how changes in the physical body relate to the neural circuits that process self-perception and impact social behaviors and their relationship to women's mental health. Her current research program considers the whole person: genetic factors, gut microbiome, neural circuits, and every patients' lived experiences. She believes that a mechanistic understanding of psychopathology will lead to precise neural targets, improving treatment for patients with mental illness.
