Latest Research News

In noisy but stationary environments, decisions should be based on the temporal integration of sequentially sampled evidence, but it remains poorly understood how decisions should be made in the face of dynamically changing sensory evidence. According to a new study published in Nature Communications, abrupt change in evidence leads to a brief suppression of behavioral response, which parallels a corresponding dip in neural activity. Yale Department of Psychiatry scientists Hyojung Seo, PhD, and John D. Murray, PhD, are co-authors.

Yann Mineur, PhD, MS, research scientist in psychiatry, and Marina Picciotto, PhD, Charles B. G. Murphy Professor of Psychiatry and Professor in the Child Study Center, of Neuroscience and of Pharmacology, are first and senior authors, respectively of a paper in Molecular Psychiatry that studied acetylcholine release in the hippocampus in response to stress.

Military veterans who suffer persistent symptoms following a concussion are at higher risk to commit intimate partner violence (IPV), according to a new Yale study.

In a new piece published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, Suhas Ganeesh, MD, postdoctoral associate in psychiatry, and Deepak Cyril D'Souza, MD, professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, argue that if cannabis caused psychosis, then the increases in the rates of cannabis use should be accompanied by a parallel increase in the rates of psychosis.

Jason DeViva, PhD; Peter Na, MD, MPH; and Robert Pietrzak, PhD, MPH are co-authors of a study in Journal of Sleep Research that evaluated pre- and pandemic-related factors associated with new-onset and exacerbated insomnia symptoms in a nationally representative sample of 3,078 United States military veterans

As researchers and clinicians continue to grapple with the psychological fallout from COVID-19, a growing body of literature has examined the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the general public. Women’s Health Research at Yale and its collaborators published a study questioning how these estimates vary so greatly and if such wide swaths of the public can truly be suffering from pandemic-related PTSD.

A study funded in part by Women's Health Research at Yale found that background stressors explain higher reports of psychological distress in female health care providers.

To explore how to promote psychological resilience and prevent negative health outcomes among such individuals, Dr. Melissa Thomas investigated the long-term physical and mental health risks and resilience of her fellow graduates from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. It was the first study to focus on graduates and consider gender differences in these topic areas since the elite institution’s integration of women in 1980.

Zachary M. Harvanek, MD, PhD; Nia Fogelman, PhD; Ke Xu, MD; and Rajita Sinha, PhD, are co-authors of a paper published in Translational Psychiatry on cumulative stress and its effects on accelerated epigenetic aging in middle-aged community individuals who do not have a medical illness.