Kristen Lindgren graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Neuroscience & Behavior. While at Wesleyan, she worked with Dr. Harry Sinnamon to investigate the effects of the median raphe nucleus on locomotion and hippocampal theta activity in anesthetized rats. Following graduation, she worked for two years as a research assistant investigating executive functioning in schizophrenia, Asperger's disorder, and social-emotional processing disorder in Dr. Dara Manoach's lab at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital. This research focused on the use of eye movements, specifically antisaccades, to examine the cost of inhibiting automatic responses, the cost of task-switching, and the relationship between these two functions. Kristen was also involved in several functional neuroimaging studies investigating working memory in normal adults and adults with schizophrenia. Her work in this lab led to co-authorship on eight peer-reviewed manuscripts.

In the fall of 2004, Kristen joined the Lab of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, directed by Dr. Helen Tager-Flusberg, after two years of medical school. Her thesis research uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to investigate volumetric differences in language-related cortex and the structural integrity of white matter connecting language regions in siblings of children with autism and their relation to language ability. In addition to learning several imaging acquisition and analysis techniques, she is being trained on cognitive and language assessments as well as research measures to diagnose autism.

For the past two years, Kristen has been a teaching assistant and a tutor for the Medical Neurosciences course at BUSM, and this year she will lead a neuroanatomy lab. She has a strong interest in teaching and plans on completing the Vesalius Program offered by the Department. Kristen also has a long-standing commitment to service in both the Department and the Medical School. She was on the executive committee for the Clinical Neuroscience Society for 4 years and is still active in the Student Interest Group in Neurology. She has helped with student recruitment for both the Department and the M.D./Ph.D. program as well as fundraising through the BUSM Alumni Association phonathons. She is also one of the editors for the Department's quarterly newsletter. Given her strong interests in neuroscience, Kristen plans to pursue a residency in pediatric neurology following completion of the M.D./Ph.D. program.