Patricia Gruner, PhD

Patricia Gruner, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who specializes in OCD and related disorders. She has specialized training in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) with patients with OCD and related disorders, neurocognitive assessment, and neuroimaging. Dr. Gruner completed her doctoral training in Clinical Psychology at Fordham University. She then completed postdoctoral training in Clinical Neuroscience at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, where she conducted fMRI and neurocognitive research in pediatric OCD. She has also served as a clinician at both the Institute for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy and Research and Western Suffolk Psychological Services. Her current work aims to integrate clinical, neurobiological, and cognitive perspectives on OCD. In particular, she is interested in how cognitive processes, such as cognitive flexibility and causal reasoning, may be altered early in disease course and how these cognitive abnormalities relate to both aberrations in neurobiological functioning and clinical presentation. Her long-term goal is to utilize this knowledge to create and refine a new intervention for patients with OCD, an adaptive computerized cognitive remediation training (CCRT) program that harnesses plasticity and targets disease specific cognitive deficits.