Lynnette A. Averill, PhD, associate research scientist in psychiatry at Yale, has been named “2015 Woman Breaking the Silence Against Mental Illness Investigator.”
The title was given because a research project Averill is completing on the drug ketamine has been chosen by the Brain & Behavior Foundation to be part of its Research Partners Program.
The program enables the foundation’s most generous supporters to designate their gift to a scientist based on interest in a specific topic, institution, or geographic area.
Averill’s research project, “Intrinsic Connectivity Networks and Cognitive Impairment in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” is being funded in the first year by the NY Women’s Committee.
According to Averill, her research “aims to determine the sustained effect of ketamine on resting-state functional connectivity MRI (rs-fcMRI) using Coupled Intrinsic Connectivity Distribution (Coupled-ICD), an innovative, data-driven method developed by Yale colleagues.
The study is an add-on to a Consortium for the Alleviation of PTSD (CAP) funded clinical trial by Yale Department of Psychiatry Chairman John Krystal, which explores the safety and efficacy of ketamine in treatment-resistant PTSD.
Averill has also been selected for the New Investigator Program for the International Society for CNS Clinical Trials and Methodology (ISCTM).
According to the society’s website, the award connects promising new investigators with a mentor, allows them to present their work at a poster session at the organization’s annual scientific meeting – to be held February 16-18, 2016, at The Fairmont in Washington, DC, – and pays for conference and membership fees.
In her application for the award, Averill wrote, “My training and expertise in cognitive impairment, psychopathology, and evidence-based treatments, and rising expertise in neuroimaging and the neurobiology of prolonged stress (i.e., PTSD, MDD), provide a unique opportunity to establish novel approaches in the study of cognition, functional connectivity, and depressive and posttraumatic psychopathology and advance our understanding of the neural underpinnings, potential biomarkers and treatment targets of these disorders.”