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Mary-Frances O'Connor

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Mary-Frances O'Connor
Born1973
Boulder, CO, USA
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipUnited States
United Kingdom
Alma materNorthwestern University University of Arizona
AwardsPatricia R. Barchas Award in Sociophysiology
Scientific career
FieldsPsychology

Neuroscience

Psychoneuroimmunology
InstitutionsUniversity of Arizona
University of California, Los Angeles
Websitehttps://maryfrancesoconnor.org/

Mary-Frances O'Connor is an American psychologist who is a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona[1]where she directs the Grief, Loss, and Social Stress (GLASS) Lab.

Early life and education

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O'Connor was born in 1973 in Boulder, CO, USA. After graduating from Northwestern University, she attended graduate school at the University of Arizona earning a PhD in Clinical Psychology in 2004. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology[2] at UCLA, and held a faculty appointment at UCLA. She returned to the University of Arizona in 2012.

Career

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O'Connor conducted the first fMRI neuroimaging study of bereavement, published in 2003.[3] As a neuroscientist, O'Connor takes the approach that "grieving can be thought of as a form of learning."[4] Learning is required to update the brain's prediction that the loved one will always be there, to the reality that they are truly gone, or the gone-but-also-everlasting hypothesis developed by O'Connor.[5]

O'Connor conducts studies to better understand the grief process both psychologically and physiologically. She is a leader in the field of prolonged grief, a clinical condition in which people do not adjust to the acute feelings of grief and show increases in yearning, avoidance, and rumination. Her work primarily focuses on trying to tease out the mechanisms that cause this ongoing and severe reaction to loss. In particular, she is curious about the neurobiological, immune, and cardiovascular factors that vary between individual responses to grief.[6] She believes that a clinical science approach toward the experience and physiology of grief can improve psychological treatment.[7] Her research focuses on the neurobiological grief response to loss with function neuroimaging, cognitive tasks, and clinical interviews.

O'Connor contributes to work demonstrating that bereavement is a health disparity.[8]

In 2020, she organized a multidisciplinary research group called the Neurobiology of Grief International Network (NOGIN).[9] Under her leadership, the group has held four international conferences, with initial support provided by the National Institute on Aging.[10]

Honors and awards

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  • Mentored Research Scientist Career Development Award (K01), National Institute of Mental Health, 2007-2012[11]
  • Fellow, Association for Psychological Science, 2019[12]
  • NPR SciFri Book Club Pick[13]
  • Next Big Idea Club's "Top 21 Psychology Books of 2022"[14]
  • Behavioral Scientists Notable Books of 2022[15]

Books

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O'Connor's book The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss was published in 2022[16] and has received praise from peers and literary critics.[17]

References

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  1. ^ "Mary-Frances O'Connor | Psychology". psychology.arizona.edu. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  2. ^ "Cousins | Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior". www.semel.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2024-07-05.
  3. ^ Finkbeiner, Ann (2021-04-22). "The Biology of Grief". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-07-13.
  4. ^ McCoy, Berly (December 20, 2021). "npr". NPR.
  5. ^ Wolf, Claudia Christine. "How the Brain Copes with Grief". Scientific American. Retrieved 2024-08-12.
  6. ^ Finkbeiner, Ann (2021-04-22). "The Biology of Grief". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-08-12.
  7. ^ Courage, Katherine Harmon (2021-07-01). "COVID Has Put the World at Risk of Prolonged Grief Disorder". Scientific American. Retrieved 2024-07-13.
  8. ^ "Grief: A Learning Curve and a Health Disparity | Arizona Alumni". alumni.arizona.edu. Retrieved 2024-07-13.
  9. ^ "Neurobiology of Grief International Network". Neurobiology of Grief International Network. Retrieved 2024-07-13.
  10. ^ "Events". Neurobiology of Grief International Network. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  11. ^ O'Connor, Mary-Frances. "Complicated Grief in Older Adults: Physiological Substrates of Emotion Regulation". Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience.
  12. ^ "APS Fellows". member.psychologicalscience.org.
  13. ^ Plasker, Diana. "The Grieving Brain: SciFri Book Club Author Livestream And Q&A".
  14. ^ "The Top 26 Science Books of 2022". Next Big Idea Club.
  15. ^ Nesterak, Antonia Violante, Evan (June 30, 2022). "Behavioral Scientist's Summer Book List 2022 - By Antonia Violante & Evan Nesterak".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ^ "DeFiore & Company". www.defliterary.com. Retrieved 2024-08-12.
  17. ^ Travers, Mark. "12 Books For Dealing With Grief, Bereavement Or Loss". Forbes. Retrieved 2024-08-12.
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