Dashiell Sacks is a PhD Candidate and research assistant working on the ground-breaking Longitudinal Adolescent Brain Study (LABS), which is tracking brain development through its most exciting phase – adolescence.
Dash is passionate about youth mental health and appreciates working with the many adolescent research participants and their families who make LABS’s important research possible.
Dash holds a Bachelor of Psychology (First Class Honours) and his research focuses on using neuroimaging to investigate neurobiological markers of youth mental health and cognition and he has published papers on both MRI & EEG correlates of youth mental health.
As part of LABS, Dash is investigating how ‘phase-amplitude coupling’ (PAC) - a promising new EEG (brain electrical activity) measure - is associated with cognition, psychological distress, and mental wellbeing in youth. PAC is understood to represent synchronisation between different systems in the brain; understanding this phenomenon is likely to help us better understand the relationship between youth mental health and cognition. PAC research has direct applications in contemporary mental health treatment technologies, and thus better understanding this phenomenon is likely to lead to better methods of identification and treatment for youth mental health in the future.
Learn more about Dash's PhD research
Awards
- USC Leadership Award, 2018
- Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Stipend Scholarship, 2019
Conferences
Society for Mental Health Research (SMHR) 2019, Structural connectivity and cross-frequency coupling in adolescence: Determining whether phase-amplitude coupling is associated with white matter integrity during adolescent development
Memberships
Professional Membership, Society for Mental Health Research (SMHR)
Research areas
- Youth mental health
- Neuroscience
- Electroencephalogram (EEG)
- Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
Sacks, D, Schwenn, P, McLoughlin, L, Lagopoulos, J, & Hermens, D 2021, ‘Phase–Amplitude Coupling, Mental Health and Cognition: Implications for Adolescence’ Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 15, pp. 1–7, doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.622313.
Sacks, D, Lagopoulos, J, Hatton, SN, Iorfino, F, Carpenter, JS, Crouse, JJ, Naismith, SL, Scott, EM, Hickie, IB, & Hermens, D 2021, ‘White Matter Integrity According to the Stage of Mental Disorder in Youth’ Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, vol. 307, doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2020.111218.
Sacks, D. D., Schwenn, P. E., De Regt, T., Driver, C., McLoughlin, L. T., Lagopoulos, J., & Hermens, D. F. (2023). Early adolescent psychological distress and cognition, correlates of resting-state EEG, interregional phase-amplitude coupling. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 183, 130-137. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2022.11.012