Amanda Boyes is a first-class research assistant with LABS, but she recently attained the additional status of First Class Honours graduate.

Amanda was awarded the highest grade for her Psychology Honours Degree, which is an additional year of study offered to high-achieving Bachelor Degree graduates.

At first, Amanda found studying the brain challenging: “I didn’t know my white matter from my grey matter!” she joked.

But now Amanda is quite familiar with a part of the brain called the orbitofrontal cortex, which is at the front of the brain above the eyes.

It is thought that the orbitofrontal cortex is involved in complex thinking, such as making decisions and processing emotions.

Amanda read research papers from around the world and discovered a lack of knowledge of how the thickness of the orbitofrontal cortex might be linked to distress in young people.

We hope to find the answer through LABS, as the number of participants increase.

Learning how our brain’s structure can provide clues about our distress is important, because it can help us treat the distress early.