Young completed her undergraduate studies at Vassar College and earned a dual MD/PhD from Johns Hopkins Medical School.

[4] After receiving her undergraduate degree from Vassar College, Young enrolled in an MD/PhD Program at Johns Hopkins Medical School.

[6] Additionally, a 1989 paper she co-authored describing an anatomically and pharmacologically derived model of basal ganglia disorders has been cited over 5000 times.

Additionally, she participated in an assessment of the Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale, which has been cited over 1000 times.

With her late husband John B. Penney Jr., Young started a laboratory at the University of Michigan studying the anatomy and pharmacology of the basal ganglia.

Young completed her undergraduate studies summa cum laude at Vassar College, with a major in chemistry and minors in art history and philosophy.

During the PhD portion of her graduate studies, Young worked with Professor Solomon Snyder on preliminary analyses of potential neurotransmitters, such as glutamate, glycine, and GABA.

[4] Mentored by the head of neurology, Sid Gilman, Young began to write grants and to work on positron emission tomography studies of Huntington's Disease.

The evidence and the hypothesis from their publication led to the development of deep brain stimulation, a treatment for Parkinson's Disease.

[3] In 1989, they published their work proposing a new model of the basal ganglia's involvement in Huntington's and Parkinson's in Trends in Neuroscience.

[18] In 1981, Young traveled with Nancy Wexler to Lake Maracaibo to study a family of many members with or at risk of Huntington's disease.

She and her husband returned yearly with Wexler to examine members of the family, to take DNA samples, and to develop a detailed pedigree.

[3] For 22 years, the team continued to travel to Venezuela until international relations with Hugo Chávez halted the project.

[19] Their work in Venezuela contributed to Jim Gusella's discovery of the location of the gene that causes Huntington's disease.

[20] As chief of neurology, Young recognized the potential benefit of bringing together the existing labs at MGH studying neurodegenerative diseases.

She developed a proposal to convert a nearby Navy building into an open lab space for the study of neurodegenerative disease, and she brought this to hospital administrators.

Her proposal received funding, and she was given almost an entire building where the Mass General Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MIND) was established.

MIND seeks to have a broad focus to study not only the cause of these diseases, but also to develop effective therapeutic techniques.

MIND has made many contributions to research of neurodegenerative diseases, including a role in the development of several clinically proven therapies.

[14] The Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Neurology partnered with Biogen to offer a fellowship in Young's honor.

The fellowship trains fellows to quickly and efficiently perform research and create treatments for neurological disorders.

[21] Following is a chronologically organized list of a selection of Young's papers which presented significant findings at that time in the field.

[27] Their research linked the potential harmful and toxic effects of glutamic acid in Alzheimer's disease.

[28] In this paper, Young and her colleagues investigated the degeneration of striatal projection neurons, present in the basal ganglia in the brain.

[17] In this paper, Young and her co-author Greenamyre present research on the role of disrupting different excitatory amino acid mechanisms in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex of the brain.

[34] Two years later, Young won the Marion Spencer Fay Award, which recognizes excellence in medicine and science through innovation and leadership.