Neuroimaging

Dr. Hilary Patricia Blumberg is the John and Hope Furth Professor of Psychiatric Neuroscience, Professor of Psychiatry, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and in the Child Center, and Director of the Mood Disorders Research Program, at the Yale School of Medicine. She graduated summa cum laude in neuroscience from Harvard University and completed her medical degree, psychiatry training and specialty training in brain scanning research at Cornell University Medical College. Dr. Blumberg’s research is devoted to understanding the brain circuitry differences that underlie mood disorders across the lifespan, with a focus on bipolar disorder and on suicide prevention. She directs the Mood Disorders Research Program at Yale that brings together a multi-disciplinary group of scientists to study the genetic, developmental and environmental factors that cause mood disorders to develop new methods for early detection, more effective interventions, and prevention of the disorders and their associated high risk for suicide. This research includes the use of new state-of-the-art brain scanning methods. The program is also known for training young scientists to be new leaders in the field. Dr. Blumberg has served as principal investigator on awards from the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Department of Veterans Affairs, BD2, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, International Bipolar Disorder Foundation, For the Love of Travis Foundation, MQ Foundation, Stanley Medical Research Institute and Women’s Health Research at Yale. She has received numerous awards including the 2021 International Society of Bipolar Disorders Mogens Schou Award for Research in Bipolar Disorder, 2021 Sethi Award, 2018 American Psychiatric Association Blanche F. Ittleson Award for outstanding and published research in child and adolescent psychiatry and 2017 Brain and Behavior Foundation Colvin Prize for Research Achievement in Mood Disorders. She is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and a member of the Society of Biological Psychiatry.

Dr. Blumenfeld's clinical and research work focuses on epilepsy, cognition and brain imaging. He directs Yale's Clinical Neuroscience Imaging Center (CNIC), a new multi-disciplinary core facility for innovative study and treatment of brain disorders. Teaching activities include a textbook titled Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases, Sinauer Assoc., Publ. 2002, 2010, 2020.

Rui Chang received his B.S. in Biological Sciences and Biotechnology from Tsinghua University, China in 2005. He then studied sensory transduction with Emily Liman and earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Southern California in 2011. He completed his postdoctoral training with Stephen Liberles at Harvard Medical School, where he investigated how body sensory cues are monitored by the brain through the vagus nerve, and how these internal signals regulate whole body physiology. He joined both the Department of Neuroscience and the Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine in January 2018.The Chang lab uses state-of-the-art molecular, genetic, and imaging approaches including single-cell gene expression profiling, virus-based anatomical mapping, in vivo imaging, optogenetics, and chemogenetics to reveal the physiological functions of diverse organ-to-brain circuits. The goal is to better understand the important body-brain interface, and to develop novel neuronal-based therapeutic strategies for disease intervention.

Steve Chang is an Associate Professor of Psychology and of Neuroscience at Yale University. He is a member of the Wu Tsai Institute and the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience at Yale. He is the co-Director of Graduate Studies for Yale's Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program (INP), and the co-Director of Undergraduate Studies for Yale's Neuroscience (NSCI) major. His research aims to understand the neural circuit mechanisms of social cognition and social decision-making. Major research approaches include using naturalistic social interaction paradigms combined with state-of-the-art behavioral and neural technologies. The ultimate goal of the research program is to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition and to learn how these processes may be disrupted in psychiatric conditions with social deficits.

Dr. Youngsun T. Cho is an Assistant Professor in the Child Study Center and Department of Psychiatry at Yale University. She is a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist. She holds an MD/PhD degree from the University of Rochester, and completed dissertation work on amygdala neuroanatomy and reward processing using fMRI. She completed psychiatry residency in the Neuroscience Research Training Program (NRTP) at Yale, and a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the Yale Child Study Center. Her current research focuses on the development of cognitive and motivational brain circuits in adolescents with depression and adolescents with schizophrenia using fMRI, and pharmacologic neuroimaging to identify mechanisms of potential treatments. Her work is funded by the NIMH, and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.

Dr. Constable received his PhD in Medical Physics from the University of Toronto. He came to Yale as a postdoctoral fellow and has been here since. In addition to being the director of MRI in the Yale Magnetic Resonance Research Center, he runs two parallel labs. One lab is a neuroscience lab focused on mapping the functional organization of the brain through functional MRI measurements and understanding the relationship between this functional organization and behavior. Such developments are leading to new approaches to functionally phenotype individuals with applications in subtyping in brain disorders and disease. Dr. Constable's other lab is focused on the development of novel MRI devices with projects around low field MRI's that can be placed in doctor's offices, with the potential to make MRI much more accessible than it is in it's current form.

Dr. Philip Robert Corlett trained in Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychiatry with Professors Trevor Robbins and Paul Fletcher at the University of Cambridge. He won a Wellcome Trust Prize Studentship and completed his PhD on the brain bases of delusion formation in the Brain Mapping Unit, Department of Psychiatry. After a short postdoc, he was awarded the University of Cambridge Parke- Davis Exchange Fellowship in Biomedical Sciences which brought him to the Yale University Department of Psychiatry to explore the maintenance of delusions with Professors Jane Taylor and John Krystal. He was named a Rising Star and Future Opinion Leader by Pharmaceutical Marketing Magazine and joined the Yale faculty in 2011 where he will continue to explore the cognitive and biological mechanisms of delusional beliefs as well as predictive learning, habit formation and addiction.

Dr. Cosgrove uses neuroreceptor imaging techniques such as PET to gain insights into the brains of people with substance use and other stress-related disorders. Trained as a clinical psychologist who worked with individuals managing alcohol and drug use disorders, Dr. Cosgrove transitioned to conducting research in order to inform the treatment of substance use disorders. Her laboratory develops and applies innovative brain imaging paradigms to track changes in critical neurochemicals over time, to identify treatment targets for psychiatric disorders, and to examine individual and sex and gender differences.

Irina Esterlis is a clinical neuropsychologist and neuroreceptor imager with extensive training in the application of SPECT and PET to the study of mood, trauma, suicide, and comorbid disorders. Dr. Esterlis has developed two novel paradigms to interrogate both the acetylcholine and glutamatergic systems in vivo in human. Her lab was also the first to show ketamine-induced changes in human volunteers in vivo. She has received awards from Society of Nuclear Medicine, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Society for Biological Psychiatry, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Esterlis' current work includes the study of the metabotropic glutamatergic receptor involvement in bipolar depression and suicide, and synaptic alterations associated with depression, aging, and suicidality. The lab has expanded to add in vivo preclinical work to elucidate human findings.

Dr. Fineberg holds an MD PhD from the University of Iowa, where she studied the molecular mechanisms that control early fate decisions for neural stem cells in mouse brain.  She initially became interested in science as an undergraduate student at Oberlin College in physiology classes, where mechanism came alive in narratives about the evolutionary and individual history of the organism. She came to Yale in 2010 to pursue clinical and research training in psychiatry.  Her current research engages  both stories and brain-based mechanisms of mental illness, asking questions about how patient social experiences relate to neural circuits and learning mechanisms.Dr. Fineberg has been awarded young investigator grants from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to pursue studies about social learning in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Dr. Fredericks’ research focuses on preclinical Alzheimer’s disease and on less common Alzheimer’s variants, using advanced imaging tools to better understand how Alzheimer’s disease progresses through functional networks in the brain. She is a member of Yale’s Clinical Neuroscience Imaging Center (CNIC), a multidisciplinary group applying innovative imaging methods to the study of brain disease. Clinically, Dr. Fredericks sees patients with a variety of cognitive and behavioral concerns. She specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative disorders.

Dr. Dylan Gee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She received her B.A. in Psychological and Brain Studies from Dartmouth College and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UCLA. Dr. Gee completed her clinical internship and a postdoctoral research fellowship at Weill Cornell Medical College. Her research focuses on child and adolescent brain development in the context of developmental psychopathology, with a particular focus on neurobiological mechanisms related to early adversity and risk for anxiety and stress-related disorders. Dr. Gee’s research has been funded by the NSF, NIMH, a NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, a NARSAD Young Investigator Award, and a Jacobs Foundation Early Career Award.

Dr. Goldfarb is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology and member of the Wu Tsai Institute. She completed her PhD in Psychology: Cognition & Perception with Dr. Elizabeth Phelps at New York University and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Departments of Diagnostic Radiology and Psychiatry with Dr. Rajita Sinha at Yale. Her research investigates different forms of learning and memory, how stress changes which parts of our experiences we remember, and the impact of memory on later behavior.

Dr. Grutzendler obtained his MD from Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia, where he was born and raised. He completed a medical internship in Internal Medicine and a residency in Neurology at Washington University/Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Following that, he pursued a combined clinical and research fellowship in the Alzheimer Disease Research Center and the Department of Neurobiology at Washington University, with additional neurobiology research training at the Skirball Institute of New York University. Dr. Grutzendler's laboratory is dedicated to understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of normal brain function and neuropathology. They have a particular focus on elucidating mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration, such as those found in Alzheimer's disease. Additionally, they aim to advance the understanding of cell-cell interactions through the utilization of intravital optical imaging techniques, enabling them to study the brain in real-time and observe dynamic processes at the cellular and molecular levels. Moreover, their laboratory is interested in developing therapeutics for brain disorders. Leveraging their expertise in brain imaging, they work with chemists to develop novel small molecules to target specific brain cell types for drug delivery and as imaging probes. In addition to the research endeavors, Dr. Grutzendler is actively involved in clinical activities focused on dementia and Alzheimer's patients. He works closely with individuals affected by these neurodegenerative disorders, providing comprehensive care and support.

Dr. Xiaosi Gu is Professor of Psychiatry and Biomedical Informatics & Data Science, and Director of the Computational Psychiatry Unit at Yale School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, followed by postdoctoral training at Virginia Tech and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London. A recipient of the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Dr. Gu is internationally recognized for her research in the field of computational psychiatry, which seeks to understand how humans form beliefs and make decisions and how these processes break down in psychiatric disorders such as addiction, depression, autism, amongst others. Continuously funded by NIH and private foundations, her work integrates computational modeling, cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, and human intracranial recording methods. Dr. Gu has published widely in leading scientific journals such as Nature Mental Health, Nature Human Behavior, JAMA Psychiatry, PNAS, amongst many others. She is a Co-Director for the Society for Computational Psychiatry, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Computational Psychiatry, and a Reviewing Editor at eLife. Dr. Gu was the organizer for the London Computational Psychiatry Course, which was a precursor to the Computational Psychiatry Conference, where she is currently a Steering Committee Member. Dr. Gu has also served as a member of the NIMH Board of Scientific Counselors, a Scientific Advisor to the Wellcome Trust and Simon’s Foundation, Co-President of the Society for Computational Psychiatry, and a grant reviewer for numerous organizations such as the NIH, NSF, the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council (UK), and DFG (Germany). Outside the lab, Dr. Gu is a dedicated advocate for mental health awareness, regularly speaking at public forums including a TEDx talk in 2018.

After completing an undergraduate degree in Computing Science at the University of Alberta, Dr. Hampson did her graduate work in Boston University's Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems, a department focused on computational neural network models of brain systems. She came to Yale as a postdoc to pursue her interests in human functional neuroimaging. During her postdoc, Dr. Hampson conducted some of the earliest studies of resting-state functional connectivity, validating the technique and relating resting-state functional connectivity measures to behavioral variables. Later, she turned her focus to using real-time fMRI neurofeedback for training people to control their brain activity patterns. She is interested in novel functional neuroimaging techniques and psychiatric applications of these techniques.

Dr. Higley studied behavioral neuroscience at Cornell University. He then completed his MD and PhD in the MSTP Program and the laboratory of Dr. Diego Contreras at the University of Pennsylvania. He continued his scientific training as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Bernardo Sabatini at Harvard Medical School. In 2010, Dr. Higley joined the faculty of the Yale Department of Neuroscience and the Program in Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration, and Repair (CNNR). He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2020. He has received numerous honors for his research, including a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Klingenstein Fellowship, and most recently the NIH Director's Pioneer Award. Dr. Higley has a secondary appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and is a member of the Wu Tsai Institute. He also serves as an Associate Director for the Yale MD-PhD Program.

Humans, by nature, are irrepressibly social and neural mechanisms that underlie real-time social behaviors are not well-understood. The overarching goal of my research is to address this knowledge gap by discovering the fundamental neural mechanisms that underlie interactive social behaviors. We have developed multi-modal two-person neuroimaging technologies based on near infrared spectroscopy, fNIRS, configured for neural and behavioral measures of real-time live face-to-face and dialogue interactions between humans. Converging evidence from simultaneous measures of neural responses, facial classifications, eye-tracking, pupillometry, EEG, and behavioral reports of subjective effects builds a foundation for a new “neuroscience of two”. Emerging theoretical frameworks are founded on the interactive brain hypothesis purporting that neural systems during interaction engage processes not engaged during “solo” tasks, and recent findings of cross-brain neural synchrony suggest that brain-to-brain coupled mechanisms underlie social processing.