John Krzeczkowski

PhD

John Krzeczkowski, Ph.D. is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health and Sessional Instructor at Brock University. He is a former Vanier Scholar and Graduate of the Neuroscience Graduate Program at McMaster. John’s program of research centers on the theme of getting people off to a strong start. To this end, his work aims to elucidate the impact of early adverse environmental conditions on emotion regulation development in infants and children and examine the effects of intervening on these adverse conditions to improve emotion regulation and optimize outcomes across the lifespan. John’s doctoral work in the lab provided the world’s first evidence showing that treating maternal postpartum depression (PPD) improved emotion regulation in the children of these women. In fact, after mothers received treatment, their children did not differ from the children of healthy control mothers without postpartum depression (Depression & Anxiety Journal). This work has been featured in many popular press publications (Medscape and USA Today) and provides
compelling evidence suggesting that we may be capable of interrupting the intergenerational
transmission of psychiatric risk from mother to child. John aims to continue to unlock the secrets
of early brain and emotion regulation development (using behavioural and neurophysiological
methods) to understand how interventions may reduce risk and help young families get off to the
strongest possible start in life. Outside of the lab,
John is game to play basically any sport (from basketball to frisbee golf) and enjoys spending time up north. One day, John hopes to travel to Italy and Greece.