Psychiatry Advances

The University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry is involved in efforts to promote and implement Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). In this podcast, four faculty members offer brief presentations and discuss the importance of DEI. Guests include Sarah Pederson, PhD; Paul Pikonis, PhD; Piper Carroll, MD; and César Escobar-Viera, MD, PhD. They discuss linking the Department of Psychiatry to the Pittsburgh community; the psychiatry residency training curriculum; departmental surveys; and LGBTQ+ health matters.

Oliver Lindhiem PHD, Associate Professor/Psychiatry/Pediatrics is an expert in childhood diagnosis of behavioral disorders. This Podcast focuses on ADHD-Hyperactive Presentation. This diagnosis, its usual treatment (medication), has for many years been controversial. Thereby highly precise measurement is much needed here. This requires research to prove the value of mobile sensing using a wristband aid. This Podcast also discusses business development of this needed device for potential wide distribution.

Coleen McClung  PHD is a nationally known researcher of Circadian Rhythms. She is funded by the NIMIH/NIDA/prominent Research Foundations. This Podcast focuses on these rhythms, present in all body/animal cells including humans. They are essential for life. Such rhythms may be altered in psychiatric disorders, e.g. Bi-Polar disorder, or other serious bodily diseases such as Cancer. These rhythms, natural and disordered, offer new approaches for effective treatment. Each of these issues is discussed.

Professor Bea Luna PHD is a nationally highly acclaimed NIMH- Funded psychologist, neuroscientist, teacher/mentor. Using multimodal brain imaging/learning methods she has pioneered in studying normal and atypical adolescent brain development from initiation to the onset of adulthood. These fascinating brain developments affected by adolescent experiences further prepare the brain for adult functioning. Adolescent risk-taking and other affects/brain development are explored in this Podcast.

Dr. Natacha De Genna PHD  is an Assistant Professor with longstanding acclaimed work relating to marijuana and nicotine use by pregnant mothers, how young age and mental health and discrimination may affect both mothers and their children post pregnancy. Her video “Mothers and Marijuana” is featured on the NIH Web Site. Like alcohol, paired maternal use of both nicotine and marijuana can be especially toxic. Her work on both large and smaller data sets has clinical implications.

Khaled Moussawi MD, PHD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, is an experienced clinical neurologist and neuroscientist. This Podcast summarizes his research team’s efforts to identify and translate pre-clinical neurobiological findings into actionable clinical treatment protocols for alcohol and potentially other addictions. Deep Brain Stimulation, DBS, now approved treatment of Parkinson’s disease, holds such promise for patients with chronic severe alcohol use disorders.

Judith Morgan PhD is Associate Professor of Psychiatry. She observes mother-young child social interactions at play while simultaneously recording the brain cortical rhythms of each. Behaviors and neural responses of children at high risk for depression (their mothers are depressed) are compared with those of non-depressed mothers. This research gives rich information/prediction about behaviors, early child brain development-later emotional states, how maternal depression may impact upon the child brain.

Kymberly Young PhD is Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She is an expert in brain science. Her 2017 article in the AJP, “Randomized Clinical Trial of Real-Time fMRI Amygdala Neurofeedback for Major Depressive Disorder: Effects on Symptoms and Autobiographical Memory Recall” is gaining attention. This Podcast focuses on the amygdala, how therapeutically it can be brought “online” in the brain through calibrated patient self-efforts related to their memories.

Fabio Ferrarelli MD PHD, Director of the Sleep and Schizophrenia Program is Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. His research focusses on how sleep spindles and slow waves differ among patients with chronic schizophrenia and/or acute psychosis relative to healthy individuals. These sleep-specific oscillatory activities may represent potential biomarkers and/or endophenotypes for schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders.

Rebecca Price PhD is Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her innovative integrated research on brain plasticity coupled with computer based cognitive therapy has gained much visibility in the psychiatric literature and at Pitt where she has recently received the Chancellors Distinguished Research Award. This Podcast discusses her research work and methodology as this relates to Ketamine infusion for refractory depression and TBS, Transcranial Brain Stimulation in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.