Eva C. Ihle, M.D., Ph.D.
Young Investigator

Dr. Eva Ihle attended the University of Southern California, obtaining a B. S. with Honors in Biology, as a result of a senior thesis project investigating the influence of gonadal steroids on axonal connectivity in the developing songbird brain. She received her M.D., Ph.D., in neurobiology, from the University of Chicago. She Is a board-certified adult psychiatrist, and a board-eligible child and adolescent psychiatrist, having recently graduated from the child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

During her residency, Dr. Ihle received the following awards: the Julius R. Krevans Award (Psychiatry Intern of the Year), the National Institute of Mental Health Outstanding Resident Award, and the Department of Psychiatry Award for Creative Achievement in Research. She is currently the medical attending in the Autism Clinic and a co-attending in the Adolescent Evaluation Clinic, both at UCSF. These clinical responsibilities complement her research efforts, where Dr. Ihle is also a post-doctoral fellow, conducting research in the lab of Allison Doupe, M.D., Ph.D. Her current project is designed to determine whether neuropeptides are important in shaping the neural activity that underlies the social context-dependence of learning and courtship behavior in the songbird, a small animal model system with general relevance to vocal learning and the role of basal ganglia-cortical circuitry in behavior. They are working to identify which neuropeptides are present in the extracellular milieu of the song control regions of the male zebra finch brain when either young or adult birds are alone, and how neuropeptide release changes during social interactions. They predict that affiliative interactions will regulate neuropeptide release in the song control nuclei, resulting in changes in neural activity in basal ganglia neurons. Such studies have the potential to provide general insights into the role of neuropeptides in normal and disordered social behavior.

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