Lab Members

Anahita Bassir Nia, MD, is an addiction psychiatrist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and Co-Director of the National Center for PTSD Advanced Fellowship at VA Connecticut. Her translational research focuses on psychedelic and other novel therapeutics for substance use and stress-related disorders, with particular interest in the mechanisms that contribute to sustained therapeutic effects.

A major focus of Dr. Bassir Nia’s research is understanding how psychedelics influence social and emotional functioning and how neurobiological, psychological, and social changes translate into behavioral and clinical outcomes. She is particularly interested in understudied outcomes of psychedelic treatments, including social information processing, connectedness, loneliness, and psychological flexibility, and in identifying processes that mediate longer-term therapeutic change. She leads mechanistic studies of psilocybin and MDMA using functional neuroimaging, experimental paradigms, and longitudinal assessments of social functioning.

Dr. Bassir Nia also leads clinical research on novel psychoactive therapeutics. She is the principal investigator of an NIAAA-funded randomized trial of intravenous DMT for alcohol use disorder integrating EEG, fMRI, PET imaging of synaptic density, behavioral measures, social functioning, and longitudinal drinking outcomes. She is also the Yale site principal investigator for a multisite first-in-human Phase I/II trial of MEAI in alcohol use disorder, and her broader research includes MDMA combined with trauma-focused psychotherapy for PTSD and clinical trials of psilocybin for depression.

Another major area of her research examines the endocannabinoid system in stress, trauma, and addiction. Using molecular PET imaging, she has studied cannabinoid type 1 receptor availability in opioid use disorder, cannabis use, PTSD, and childhood trauma. She is the principal investigator of a NIDA-funded R01 investigating whether alterations in the endocannabinoid system during early abstinence from opioids can predict subsequent relapse risk.

Dr. Bassir Nia is actively involved in education and mentorship in addiction psychiatry, trauma, and psychedelic science. She is Director of the Psychedelic Elective for Psychiatry Residents at VA Connecticut, leads didactic teaching on psychedelics and the neurobiology of addiction for Yale psychiatry residents, and serves as Section Editor for the psychedelic section of Current Addiction Reports.

Ardavan Mohammad Aghaei, MD, MPH, is a psychiatry resident in the Neuroscience Research Training Program (NRTP) at Yale School of Medicine. He earned his MD and MPH from Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran, where his research focused on social network analysis and the epidemiology of substance use disorders. Following graduation, he joined the Yale Department of Psychiatry as a postdoctoral researcher in the Adversity, Brain, Novel Therapeutics (ABN) Lab and the Schizophrenia Neuropsychopharmacology Research Group at Yale (SNRGY). Under the mentorship of Dr. Anahita Bassir Nia, his research focused on endocannabinoid system dysregulation in substance use and stress-related disorders, as well as the therapeutic potential of psychedelic compounds for these conditions. As a psychiatry resident, he continues his research with Dr. Bassir Nia. His research interests lie at the intersection of social neuroscience and computational psychiatry, with a particular focus on using computational models to study how therapeutic interventions—especially psychedelic compounds—alter social cognition and behavior in healthy individuals and people with psychiatric disorders.

Angelina Contreras is currently a Research Assistant 2 within the ABN Lab at Yale University, Department of Psychiatry. She is actively involved in the recruitment and the coordination of multiple research projects, primarily focusing on substance use disorders. Angelina began her career in pre-clinical research consisting of neuromodulation and addiction studies with non-human primates. She graduated from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities with a B.S. in Psychology and minors in Biology, Integrative Neuroscience, and Public Health. Her research interests include pharmaceutical treatments for chronic severe mental illness and substance addiction.

Dr. Matthews is an internist with dual board certifications in infectious diseases and addiction medicine. He is actively involved in drug development and pharmacokinetic studies, with a particular interest in developing psychedelic therapeutics for treating chronic pain across the lifespan. Additionally, Dr. Matthews focuses on improving methodologies to effectively blind sensory experiences associated with these drugs.