News

Dr. Rotem Dan accepted to Alies Muskin Career Development Leadership Program

Dr. Rotem Dan has been accepted for the 2023 Alies Muskin Career Development Leadership Program (CDLP). Congratulations, Rotem!

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Dr. Isabelle Rosso accepted as Full Member at ACNP

Dr. Isabelle Rosso has been accepted as a Full Member at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). Congratulations, Isabelle!

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Dr. Poornima Kumar receives NIMH R21 Award

Dr. Poornima Kumar has been awarded an R21 from NIMH entitled “Building Normative Models of Reinforcement Learning Decision Making Behavior.” The main goals of this proposal are to (1) parse Reinforcement Learning based Decision-Making (RLDM) sub-processes into mathematically-defined parameters in a large sample using a diverse set of tasks; (2) assess test-retest reliability of these parameters; and finally (3) build normative models of the parameters and chart the heterogeneity at the level of the individual. It is expected that resulting normative models will provide us with a framework...

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Dr. Emily Belleau receives 2023 Donald F. Klein Early Career Investigator Award

Dr. Emily Belleau has been selected as the 2023 Donald F. Klein Early Career Investigator Award winner from the ADAA! ADAA offers this annual award to an early career investigator for the best original research paper on neurobiology, psychopharmacology, psychosocial treatments, or experimental psychopathology of anxiety disorders and depression. Emily received this award for her recent manuscript reporting CAP (Co-Activation Pattern) analyses of fMRI data collected in youth at increased MDD risk (due to maternal MDD). Congratulations, Emily!

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Dr. Manuel Kuhn promoted to Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of Neuroimaging and Instrumentation Core in LATN

Dr. Manuel Kuhn has been promoted to Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In addition, effective 12/1/22, Manuel will become the Director of the Neuroimaging and Instrumentation Core within the Laboratory for Affective and Translational Neuroscience.   In this role, Manuel will provide assistance, consultation and support for the following areas: Task code implementation on diverse task presentation platforms (Eprime, presentation, Matlab PTB, PsychoPy) Task and device setup (e.g., button box, shocker, displays, handgrips, SCR, startle) on PRISMAs Review of fMRI session...

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Dr. Isabelle Rosso elected co-Chair of SOBP’s Committee for Advancing Women’s Leadership

Dr. Isabelle Rosso has been elected co-Chair of the Committee for Advancing Women’s Leadership for the Society of Biological Psychiatry (SOBP). This is a critical committee that will pursue important work for SOBP and the field. Congratulations, Isabelle, and thank you for your leadership!

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Dr. Poornima Kumar launches the COMP Group in CDASR

Dr. Poornima Kumar has launched a new group with in the Center for Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Research. Her COMputational Psychopathology (COMP) group will seek to understand how we make decisions in our day-to-day lives to maximize reward and minimize punishment, and how this can go awry in individuals suffering from psychiatric illnesses. Specifically, they will investigate the neural, molecular, behavioral correlates of reinforcement learning and decision-making using neuroimaging, computational models, and machine learning statistical approaches. The long-term goal is to identify...

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Dr. Andrea Cataldo receives P50 Seed Grant

Dr. Andrea Cataldo is a recipient of a P50 Seed Grant for her project entitled, “The Impact of Evidence Strength vs. Decisional Bias on the Positive Memory Deficit in Depression.” This seed project aims to test the feasibility of a novel, model-driven behavioral task to distinguish the familiarity vs. motivated retrieval accounts, with the long-term goal of evaluating memory vs. decision-making mechanisms as potential treatment targets for Major Depressive Disorder. Congratulations, Andrea!

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Dr. Michael Lewis receives research awards from McLean Hospital and University of Wisconsin

Dr. Michael Lewis has been awarded a 2022-2023 Rappaport Mental Health Research Scholar Award from McLean Hospital. The title of his project is “Machine Learning Approaches for Precision Fear Learning in PTSD.” In addition, he has received a 2022 Wisconsin Emotion Symposium Travel Award. At the University of Wisconsin, he will present research entitled “Toward Consistent Findings in Fear Learning Research: A Multiverse Analysis of Fear Acquisition and Extinction Retention in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.” Congratulations, Michael!

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Dr. Matthew Sacchet receives research grants from NIMH and Mind & Life Institute

Dr. Matthew Sacchet is a recipient of the 3-year R01 from NIMH entitled “Individualized brain systems and depression”. In this grant, Matthew will perform secondary analyses to EMBARC and FAST-MAS fMRI data toward the goal of developing individualized fMRI networks (i.e., subject-specific neural network), and how they relate to various clinical variables (e.g., symptom profiles, response to treatment. Matthew is also a recipient of a Mind & Life Francisco J. Varela Research Grant (https://www.mindandlife.org/grants/varela-grants/) for his project entitled “Biological and psychological...

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Dr. Emily Belleau promoted to Assistant Professor

Dr. Emily Belleau was recently promoted to Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Congratulations, Emily!

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Dr. Rotem Dan awarded two post-doctoral scholarships

Dr. Rotem Dan has been awarded scholarships from the National Postdoctoral Award Program for Advancing Women in Science (Israel), as well as from the Hebrew University Post-Doctoral Scholarship Program for Women. Congratulations, Rotem!

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Dr. Matthew Sacchet receives McLean Dorris Family Pilot Translational Award

Dr. Matthew Sacchet has recently received a 2021 McLean Dorris Family Pilot Translational Award. In his project entitled, “Multi-level mechanisms of mindfulness-based interventions for depression,” Matthew will use a variety of biological, computational, and psychological approaches to better understand the mechanisms of health-related benefits of mindfulness meditation-based interventions for individuals with depression. Congratulations, Matthew!

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Dr. Jennifer Fanning receives McLean Dorris Family Pilot Translational Award

Dr. Jennifer Fanning has recently received a 2021 McLean Dorris Family Pilot Translational Award. In her project entitled, “Translational role of central amygdala in trauma-related retaliatory aggression,” Jennifer will conduct complementary human and mouse investigations (with Dr. Emily Newman) into the function of the central amygdala in trauma- and stress-exposed individuals using multimodal imaging approaches. Congratulations, Jennifer!

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Dr. Matthew Sacchet promoted to Assistant Professor

Dr. Matthew Sacchet was recently promoted to Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Congratulations, Matthew!

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