Priscila joined NeuRA in 2023 as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Preclinical Schizophrenia Research Laboratory led by Dr Tertia Purves-Tyson. Her work predominantly relates to a NSW Health grant awarded to Dr Purves-Tyson in 2022, which aims to uncover how microglial cells may be modifying the effects of specific pharmacotherapies on schizophrenia-like behaviours during adolescence and adulthood in an animal model of dopamine dysregulation. As part of this work, Priscila will also be investigating whether potential alterations in microglial cell function occur in a sex-specific manner.

Priscila completed her Bachelor degree in Biomedical Science at EBMSP in 2010 and her Master’s degree of Pharmacology and Toxicology at UFCSPA in 2014, both high ranked universities in Brazil. She moved to Australia in 2015, collaborating as a Visiting Scholar on a research project of cannabidiol and synthetic oxytocin effects in methamphetamine addiction in rats in the Behavioural Neuropharmacology laboratory at Macquarie University. Priscila submitted her PhD thesis, which examined the brain and behaviour effect of alcopops use in adolescence and the predisposition for methamphetamine use in male and female adult rats, in late 2022.