Yale Department of Psychiatry researchers participated in three scientific studies named leading research achievements in 2020 by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.
Chadi Abdallah, MD, Associate Professor Adjunct of Psychiatry, was first author of a paper that found that in patients with treatment-resistant depression, pre-treatment with the anti-inflammatory medicine rapamycin before administering ketamine significantly extended the antidepressant effects of ketamine. The research was published in Neuropsychopharmacology. Other members of the research team from Yale included John Krystal, MD; Gerard Sanacora, MD, PhD; the late Ronald Duman, PhD; Deepak Cyril D'Souza, MD; Kyung-Heup Ahn, MD; Mohini Ranganathan, MD; Ralitza Gueorguieva, PhD; Selin Goktas, MS; Mohamed Sherif, MD, MSc; Richard Formica, MD; Steven Southwick, MD; and Lynnette Averill, PhD. Read more.
Dylan Gee, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, led a team of Yale Department of Psychology members and other researchers that discovered a brain circuit that appears to enable both rodents and people to inhibit their threat response in the presence of a learned “safety signal.” The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests it may be possible to develop a new way of treating people who have difficulty controlling their fearful or anxious responses to perceived threats. Read more.
Samuel Wilkinson, MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, led a study covering the 20 years between 1997 and 2016 that revealed substantial changes have occurred in the way doctors are treating outpatients diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The results, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, showed a fraction of outpatients today are being treated with a mood stabilizer and a greater fraction are being treated with a second-generation antipsychotic medication. Greg Rhee, PhD, Assistant Professor Adjunct of Psychiatry, was first author. Read more.