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Leah Mayo

Visiting Senior Lecturer

Assistant Lecturer. My research focuses on the neurobiology of stress and emotion processing in healthy and clinical populations.

Presentation

Many psychiatric conditions are hallmarked by dysregulated stress reactivity and emotional responding. My research aims to better understand stress and emotion processing in order to develop novel psychiatric therapies.

Our work combines behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging methods to gain better insight into how we perceive and react to stressful situations and emotional stimuli. I am particularly interested in the role of the endocannabinoid system, a neuromodulatory system involved in both stress reactivity and emotion processing. In healthy populations, we are exploring how external factors (e.g. stress, drugs of abuse) influence the endocannabinoid system. In clinical populations, we are interested in how the endocannabinoid system becomes dysregulated and contributes to impairments in stress and emotional reactivity. Our overall goal is to determine if the endocannabinoid system can serve as a novel target in the treatment of psychiatric disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Publications

Publications in DiVA

2025

Leah Mayo, Emelie Gauffin, Gavin N. Petrie, Ryann Tansey, Raegan Mary Rose Mazurka, Connor James Haggarty, Madeleine Jones, Hilda Engelbrektsson, Victoria Aminoff, Anisja Huhne-Landgraf, Mark E. Schmidt, Darrel J. Pemberton, Cecilia Fredlund, Lars Östman Vasko, Hanna Karlsson, Andreas Löfberg, Michal Pietrzak, Gerhard Andersson, Andrea Johansson Capusan, Matthew N. Hill, Markus Heilig (2025) The efficacy of elevating anandamide via inhibition of fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) combined with internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder: a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial Neuropsychopharmacology (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Madeleine Jones, Connor James Haggarty, Gavin N. Petrie, Abigail R. Lunge, India Morrison, Matthew N. Hill, Markus Heilig, Leah Mayo (2025) Endocannabinoid contributions to the perception of socially relevant, affective touch in humans Neuropsychopharmacology, Vol. 50, p. 849-855 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

2024

Raegan Mazurka, Kate L. Harkness, Stefanie Hassel, Niclas Stensson, Nikita Nogovitsyn, Jordan Poppenk, Jane A. Foster, Scott D. Squires, Jessie Rowe, Roumen V. Milev, Katherine E. Wynne-Edwards, Gustavo Turecki, Stephen C. Strother, Stephen R. Arnott, Raymond W. Lam, Susan Rotzinger, Sidney H. Kennedy, Benicio N. Frey, Leah Mayo (2024) Endocannabinoid concentrations in major depression: effects of childhood maltreatment and relation to hippocampal volume Translational Psychiatry, Vol. 14, Article 431 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

2023

Irene Perini, Leah M. Mayo, Andrea Johansson Capusan, Elisabeth Paul, Adam Yngve, Robin Kämpe, Emelie Gauffin, Raegan Mary Rose Mazurka, Bijar Ghafouri, Niclas Stensson, Anna Asratian, J. Paul Hamilton, Åsa Kastbom, Per A Gustafsson, Markus Heilig (2023) Resilience to substance use disorder following childhood maltreatment: association with peripheral biomarkers of endocannabinoid function and neural indices of emotion regulation Molecular Psychiatry, Vol. 6, p. 2563-2571 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

2022

Irene Perini, Sara Kroll, Leah M. Mayo, Markus Heilig (2022) Social Acts and Anticipation of Social Feedback Neuroscience of Social Stress, p. 393-416 (Chapter in book) Continue to DOI

News

Research leader and experiment participant with electrodes on her chin.

The brain’s cannabinoid system protects against addiction

High levels of the body’s own cannabinoid substances protect against developing addiction in individuals previously exposed to childhood maltreatment, according to a new study from Linköping University.
researcher and participant each sits in front of a computer with a curtain between them so that they do not see each other.

CSAN were praised at neuroscience event

Society for Social Neuroscience recently organized its 12th annual meeting. CSAN was well-represented at this year’s meeting, with individuals from several groups being recognized. One of them was Leah Mayo who was awarded the Early Career Award.
Leah Mayo.

Leah Mayo received the Young Investigator Award

Leah Mayo, researcher at CSAN, has received this year’s Young Investigator Award from the European Behavioral Pharmacology Society (EBPS). - It is really encouraging to be recognized by many of the scientists who have inspired a lot of my research.

About me

CV

  • 2020 Assistant Professor, Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience (CSAN), Linköping University
  • 2015 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, CSAN, Linköping University
  • 2015 Ph.D. in Neurobiology, University of Chicago
    Advisor: Harriet de Wit
    Thesis title: A multidimensional approach to de novo drug conditioning in healthy humans: combining self-report, behavioral, and psychophysiological measures.
  • 2013 M.S. in Molecular Pathogenesis & Molecular Medicine, University of Chicago
  • 2009 B.S. in Neuroscience, University of Michigan
    Advisors: Shelly Flagel, Terry Robinson, Huda Akil
    Thesis title: Characterizing individual variation to reward-related cues in animals selectively bred for locomotor response to novelty.

Awards

  • 2020-2024 Swedish Research Council Starting Grant
  • 2019-2021 Brain & Behavior Research Foundation NARSAD Young Investigator Award
  • 2015-2017 Linköping University Centre for Systems Neurobiology Postdoctoral Fellowship

Organisation

A researcher is looking at encased samples in a lab.

Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience - CSAN

Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience (CSAN) integrates knowledge and methodology from different areas of basic and clinical neuroscience.

Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences (BKV)

What characterizes the Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences (BKV) is the wide breadth of research and education. BKV is one of the largest departments at LiU with affiliation mainly to the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

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