Twelve affiliates of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale have been awarded research grants through the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation's NARSAD Young Investigator Grant Program.
The foundation in 2015 has awarded $13 million in 191 new two-year grant awards to "support the work of promising young scientists with innovative ideas in mental health research."
According to the foundation, the grants address research questions across many diagnostic categories.
Receiving grants from Yale are:
Depression
-- George Dragoi, MD, PhD, will investigate brain circuitry underlying a cognitive process altered in patients with depression -- one by which we generate internal representations.
-- Veronica Musante, PhD, will expand findings on dopamine transmission in brain in mechanisms implicated in major depressive disorder.
-- Darren Michael Opland, PhD, will develop a novel treatment for a specific aspect of major depressive disorder: anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
-- Patricia A. Gruner, PhD, will investigate problems with casual reasoning frequently observed in those with obsessive compulsive disorder.
Schizophrenia
-- Renata Batista-Brito, PhD, will explore the role of regulatory brain cells known as interneurons in the development of schizophrenia.
-- Stephanie Mary Groman, PhD, will investigate the neural mechanisms underlying decision-making impairments in schizophrenia.
-- Albert R. Powers, MD, PhD, hopes to connect the neural activity underlying hallucinations experienced in schizophrenia to the actual experience of hallucinations.
-- Jose Alejandro Cortes-Briones, PhD, will evaluate a method for estimating relapse risk for patients with schizophrenia.
Multiple Disorders
-- Renato Polimanti, PhD, will apply an innovative technique to understand genetic predisposition to psychiatric disorders.
-- Gretchen L. Hermes, MD, PhD, will explore the relationship between mitochondrial dysregulation and abnormal glutamate and glutamine signaling in the brain.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
-- Lynnette Astrid Averill, PhD, will evaluate the effects of ketamine on the cognitive functioning of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Suicide Prevention
-- Emily B. Ansell, PhD, will investigate neural system dysfunctions underlying suicidality and explore a possible drug intervention for high-risk individuals -- in this case, people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.