Bio

Allyson Mackey, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Mackey completed her postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University.   Dr. Mackey studies how early childhood experiences impact brain development. She is interested in whether experiences associated with low SES accelerate brain maturation and reduce plasticity. Her data suggest that lower SES is associated with faster cortical thinning, and with earlier cortical network segregation, with consequences for cognitive development and learning in school (Leonard et al., 2019; Mackey et al., 2015; Tooley et al., 2019). She is also interested in how motivation promotes learning and plasticity, via changes in dopamine release, even in the face of early maturation. Her goal is to use this knowledge to inform the type and timing of cognitive interventions (Mackey, Hill, Stone, & Bunge, 2011; Mackey, Park, Robinson, & Gabrieli, 2017).