Kevin Clancy awarded a Joseph & Susan Gatto Foundation Award for his project entitled “Phenomenological and mechanistic properties of trauma-related intrusive memories and their roles in maladaptive coping behaviors”.
Kevin Clancy awarded a Joseph & Susan Gatto Foundation Award. This project aims to identify a mechanistic link between the vivid sensory features of trauma intrusions and harmful coping behaviors, like substance use. Combining EMAs of intrusion properties and coping behaviors with fMRI and MRS, Kevin will test the hypothesis that maladaptive coping is driven by attempts to dampen the sensory vividness of intrusions, and that this vividness is driven by sensory cortical disinhibition. Findings will inform mechanism-based interventions targeting the sensory vividness of intrusions as a maintaining factor of harmful substance use in trauma-exposed adults.
Congratulations, Kevin!
Arkadiy Maksimovskiy is the recipient of “One Crimson” award
Arkadiy Maksimovskiy is the recipient of “One Crimson” award based on his undergraduate teaching—this award is given by student athletes “to acknowledge a member of the Harvard campus community they feel plays a meaningful role in their Harvard experience”.
Congratulations, Arkadiy!
Laura Murray awarded the Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Mental Health Research Scholar Award
Laura Murray was awarded a Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Mental Health Research Scholar Award for her project entitled “Characterizing Anhedonia in Teens: Linking Common and Person-Specific Patterns of Resting-State Network Connectivity to Clinical Outcomes”.
Congratulations Laura!
Manuel Kuhn awarded Eric Dorris Memorial Fellowship
Manuel Kuhn was awarded an Eric Dorris Memorial Fellowship for his project entitled “A Combined Investigation of the Protective Impact of the NOF/Q Antagonist LY-2940094 on Stress-induced Depression- and Anxiety-related Phenotypes in Humans”.
Congratulations, Manuel!
Christian Webb is the 2023 recipient of the Theodore Blau Early Career Award
I am delighted to announce that Christian is the 2023 recipient of the Theodore Blau Early Career Award for Outstanding Contribution to Professional Clinical Psychology, given by the Division 12 (Society of Clinical Psychology) of the American Psychological Foundation.
This award honors a clinical psychologist for accomplishments and promise in clinical psychology.
Congratulations, Christian!
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!
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!
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 to study RLDM disorders at the individual participant level without parsing the clinical cohort, which will be the first step towards precision medicine.
Congratulations, Poornima!
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!
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 procedures
- fMRI protocol setup and optimization
- Statistical design and optimization for fMRI task designs
- fMRI preprocessing strategies
- fMRI/sMRI data analyses
- SPM workshops
- NDA upload of neuroimaging data (i.e., scripts for header anonymization, de-facing, NDA toolkit for data upload)
- Harmonizing central data structure and script curation via e.g. centralized scripts on Github/GitLab
- Behavioral modeling and lab-wide standardized analysis strategies (e.g., PRT, Apple-Gathering task)
- EMA and RedCap API access and processing pipelines
Congratulations, Manuel, for these new roles/titles!
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!
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 individual-specific treatment based on these correlates to improve outcomes for individuals who suffer from psychiatric disorders.
Congratulations, Poornima!
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!
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!
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 mechanisms of mindfulness meditation-based interventions for depression”.
Congratulations, Matthew!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!