Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit

Chris Pittenger earned his MD and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, where his graduate work was done with Nobel Prize recipient Eric Kandel. He returned to Yale University, his undergraduate alma mater, for residency and research training in psychiatry in 2003. He joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2007 and is now Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry, Professor of Psychology and in the Child Study Center, and Deputy Chair for Translational Research in the Department of Psychiatry .Chris has always been fascinated by the question of how the brain, a complex but ultimately a physical structure, creates thought, feeling, consciousness, and other aspects of the mind.  As a psychiatrist he is additionally focused on how these processes go wrong - how brain dysregulation leads to dysregulated cognition, emotion, and behavior and to mental suffering, and how advancing our understanding of these relationships can guide us to new strategies to alleviate that suffering.  Much of his work has focused on obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette syndrome and on the cortico-basal ganglia circuitry that is implicated in their pathophysiology.  More recently he has co-founded the Yale Program for Psychedelic Science, focused on understanding how molecules like psilocybin and LSD can teach us about brain and behavior and may lead to new treatments for a range of neuropsychiatric pathology.  He is also one of the founding Directors of the Yale Center for Brain and Mind Health, which seeks to bridge disciplines and levels of analysis to bring new therapeutics to individuals suffering from disorders of the mind and brain.Dr. Pittenger's research and clinical work have been acknowledged by a number of prestigious awards, including grant funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke, NARSAD, the Tourette Syndrome of America, the Doris Duke Charitable Trust, and other organizations.  He has won a number of awards, including from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Society for Neuroscience, the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American College of Psychiatrists. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International OCD Foundation and Chair of both their Grant Review Committee and their Annual Research Symposium Planning Committee.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Neurological Association.

Dr. Costeines is the Program Manager of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (CNRU), the Neuroscience Research Training Program (NRTP), and the Yale Program for Psychedelic Science (YPPS) working with Dr. Christopher Pittenger.

Sara Katherine Mourani (also known as Cara Mourani) is a Lebanese-Syrian medical graduate of the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC). She currently serves as Chief Resident of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (CNRU). Her clinical and research interests include disaster psychiatry, mental health policy reform, schizophrenia (prodromal states and first-episode psychosis), and computational neuroscience. These interests were shaped by her direct, on-the-ground experience during Lebanon’s overlapping crises since 2019, including the October Revolution, the economic collapse, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the August 4th Beirut Port explosion. During this time, she collaborated with the Arab Reform Initiative, a Paris-based think tank, and published a scoping review of Lebanon’s mental health system, proposing policy reforms with an emphasis on disaster preparedness and system resilience. She also worked on multiple disaster psychiatry initiatives, including the development and delivery of a trauma-awareness curriculum at her medical center, as well as the co-founding of Fashit Khele’ (translation: Catharsis) a free, online group support program with a clinical psychologist to tackle the shortage of mental health professionals in the country. She aspires to continue working on disaster-related mental health initiatives in her native Lebanon and the wider region, integrating clinical care, research, and policy reform.

Experiencing the impact of the cocaine epidemic in my native Colombia led me to pursue a career dedicated to the improved understanding and treatment of cocaine addiction. Since completing Clinical Training and becoming U.S Board Certified in Adult Psychiatry and Addictions Psychiatry in 2012, I have developed academic interest in the regulation of cocaine self-administration in humans, the validation of Remote Wireless Sensor Network (RWSN) technology for detecting cocaine use, and the role of cocaine-induced deficits in sleep in the putative therapeutic effects of the atypical stimulant, modafinil. Currently; my main career interests lie in the development of neurobiologically informed medication treatments for cocaine dependence, such as the ones based on homeostatic changes on the glutamatergic pathways. As Inpatient Chief of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (CNRU) of the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC), I provide care for the patients who are admitted on our floor in order to participate in research studies or in order to receive treatment for the psychiatric conditions afflicting them. This setting fosters collaboration with other clinicians, researchers, as well as teaching of Medical Students and Psychiatry Residents

Dr. Youngsun T. Cho is an Assistant Professor in the Child Study Center and Department of Psychiatry at Yale University. She is a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist. She holds an MD/PhD degree from the University of Rochester, and completed dissertation work on amygdala neuroanatomy and reward processing using fMRI. She completed psychiatry residency in the Neuroscience Research Training Program (NRTP) at Yale, and a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the Yale Child Study Center. Her current research focuses on the development of cognitive and motivational brain circuits in adolescents with depression and adolescents with schizophrenia using fMRI, and pharmacologic neuroimaging to identify mechanisms of potential treatments. Her work is funded by the NIMH, and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.

Dr. De Aquino is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and Assistant Director for Research Affairs at the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit. In addition to treating persons with substance use disorders and co-occurring medical and psychiatric disorders, he combines behavioral pharmacology, computerized psychophysical techniques, and clinical trial methods to develop novel therapeutics for pain and addiction.

Zach Harvanek is an Assistant Professor and a board-certified Consultation-Liaison Psychiatrist. He completed his MD and PhD at the University of Michigan, studying the neurobiological mechanisms through which stress impacts the aging process. He trained at Yale for his Psychiatry residency and his fellowship, and worked with Drs. Rajita Sinha and Ke Xu to analyze how adversity and psychological resilience are related to epigenetic aging. His current work focuses on relationships between mental health and long-term physical outcomes, including obesity, metabolic health and aging.