Jo Cara Pendergrass, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
cara.pendergrass@vanderbilt.edu
Dr. Pendergrass has been a member of the faculty since 2007. Her research includes utilizing neuroimaging techniques in combination with clinical neuropsychology to further understand the neural underpinnings of psychiatric disorders. She also studies emotion, emotion regulation, and the integration of cognitive and emotional processes in healthy and psychiatric populations.
Education
PhD, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
BA, Vanderbilt University
Postgraduate Training
Intern in Clinical Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago
Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuropsychology and Neuroimaging,
Dartmouth Medical School/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
Areas of Clinical Expertise
Clinical Neuropsychology, adult neurological and psychiatric populations
Research Interests
Emotion, Emotion Regulation, Executive Functioning, Psychosis, Neuroimaging
Representative Publications
1. Koven NS, Roth RM, Pendergrass JC, Flashman LA, McAllister TW, Saykin AJ (in revision). Contributions of semantic clustering strategy to verbal learning and memory in schizophrenia. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.
2. Roth RM, Koven NS, Pendergrass JC (2007). An introduction to structural and functional imaging. In Horton AM, Wedding, D (Eds). The Neuropsychology Handbook, 3rd edition. Springer Publishing Company.
3. Roth RM, Pendergrass JC (2006). Advances in neurobiology of pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder. Current Medical Literature-Psychiatry, 17, 33-39.
4. Pendergrass JC, Ross TJ, Garavan H, Stein EA, Risinger RC (2003). Differential neural responses to emotional stimuli in females and males: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study in humans. Brain and Cognition, 51, 195-196.
5. Garavan H, Pendergrass JC, Ross TJ, Stein EA, and Risinger RC (2001). Amygdala response to both positively and negative valenced stimuli. Neuroreport, 12, 2779-2783.
