In this episode of The Biological Psychiatry Podcast, Dr. Elvisha Dhamala sits down with Dr. Nathaniel Harnett from McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School to discuss his recent paper published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.

When we think about the neurobiology of PTSD, regions like the amygdala and prefrontal cortex typically come to mind. But an emerging body of research points to the visual cortex as potentially important for understanding trauma-related outcomes. A critical question, however, has remained unanswered: are changes in visual cortex structure a consequence of PTSD itself, or of trauma exposure more broadly? In this conversation, we explore how the team addressed this question by comparing cortical thickness of early visual areas in recently trauma-exposed individuals and controls across two independent samples. Dr. Harnett explains why distinguishing trauma-related from PTSD-specific brain changes matters for biomarker development, and what it means that primary visual cortex was thicker after trauma exposure independent of PTSD symptom severity. We also discuss what the regional specificity of these findings tells us about how trauma acutely impacts the brain, and why the absence of pre-trauma imaging remains one of the field's greatest challenges. The conversation closes with a look at what these findings mean for understanding the earliest neurobiological impacts of trauma and identifying who may be most vulnerable to developing PTSD.

Paper:

Recent Trauma Exposure Is Associated With Greater Thickness of the Primary Visual Cortex: A Discovery and Replication Analysis

DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2026.04.016

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This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or professional advice. The views expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect those of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, its family of journals, or its editors. © 2026 Society of Biological Psychiatry. All rights reserved, including those for text and data mining or use in AI systems.

In this episode of The Biological Psychiatry Podcast, Dr. Elvisha Dhamala sits down with Dr. Leila Nabulsi from the University of Southern California to discuss her recent paper published in Biological Psychiatry.

The brain doesn't work as a collection of isolated parts, it works as a network, with white matter pathways acting as the wires that connect regions into functional circuits. But understanding how those connections are altered in bipolar disorder has been difficult, largely because most studies have been too small or too variable in their methods to produce reliable answers. In this conversation, we explore how the ENIGMA Bipolar Disorder Working Group tackled this challenge by pooling diffusion MRI data from 16 sites around the world to map structural brain network disruptions in bipolar disorder. Dr. Nabulsi walks us through what it means to think of the brain as a network, why individuals with bipolar disorder showed reduced network efficiency and disrupted connectivity in limbic, fronto-limbic, and default mode circuits, and how clinical features like illness duration, psychosis history, and medication use relate to these network changes. We also discuss what these findings might mean for the everyday experiences of people living with bipolar disorder and where the field goes from here.

Paper:

Structural Brain Network Alterations in Relation to Treatment and Illness Severity in Bipolar Disorder

DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2026.04.020

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This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or professional advice. The views expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect those of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, its family of journals, or its editors. © 2026 Society of Biological Psychiatry. All rights reserved, including those for text and data mining or use in AI systems.

In this episode of The Biological Psychiatry Podcast, Dr. Elvisha Dhamala sits down with Dr. Omid Kardan from the University of Michigan to discuss his recent paper published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.

Screen time concerns are everywhere, but it's not just how much time young people spend on screens, it's how they use them. In this conversation, we explore whether differences in brain development during childhood can predict addictive patterns of screen use in early adolescence. Using data from the ABCD Study, Dr. Kardan's team found that delayed cortical maturation at ages 9-10 predicted addictive screen use two years later, with videogaming showing the strongest association. We discuss what cortical maturation means, why reward processing told a different story, and what these findings mean for parents, clinicians, and policymakers.

Paper:

The roles of delayed cortical maturation and lower anticipatory reward activation in predicting addictive screen use in youth

DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2026.03.012

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This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or professional advice. The views expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect those of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, its family of journals, or its editors. © 2026 Society of Biological Psychiatry. All rights reserved, including those for text and data mining or use in AI systems.

In this episode of The Biological Psychiatry Podcast, Dr. Elvisha Dhamala sits down with Dr. Pilyoung Kim from the University of Denver to discuss their recent paper published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.

Pregnancy transforms the brain to prepare for parenthood, but what happens when financial instability disrupts that process? In this conversation, we explore how income losses during pregnancy dampen brain responses to infant cries in the postpartum period, while income gains strengthen neural bonding with one's own baby. We discuss what these findings mean for understanding the neurobiology of parenting, why income instability may matter more than poverty itself, and the implications for supporting families during this critical window.

Paper:

Income Instability During Pregnancy Prospectively Relates to Postpartum Brain Function for Parent–Infant Bonding

DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2026.03.003

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This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or professional advice. The views expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect those of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, its family of journals, or its editors. © 2026 Society of Biological Psychiatry. All rights reserved, including those for text and data mining or use in AI systems.

In this episode of The Biological Psychiatry Podcast, Dr. Elvisha Dhamala sits down with Dr. Alex Cohen from Louisiana State University and Dr. Mark Opler from Clario to discuss their recent paper published in Biological Psychiatry.

Psychiatric clinical trials have some of the highest failure rates in medicine. In this conversation, we explore how a simple, objective measure, the timing of a patient's speech, can be used to enrich clinical trial samples, nearly doubling drug-placebo effect sizes with half the sample. We discuss what speech latency reveals about schizophrenia symptoms, how this approach worked across 8 languages in a global Phase 3 trial, and what it means for the future of psychiatric drug development.

Paper:

A Single, Interpretable Vocal Biomarker for Enriching Antipsychotic Clinical Trials

DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2025.11.025

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Instagram: @biologicalpsych

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This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or professional advice. The views expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect those of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, its family of journals, or its editors. © 2026 Society of Biological Psychiatry. All rights reserved, including those for text and data mining or use in AI systems.