A research project by Vaughn R. Steele, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry, and Wan-Ling Tseng, PhD, assistant professor in the Child Study Center, will be funded with a Yale Center for Brain and Mind Health (CBMH) Pilot Award.
The project title is “Targeting fronto-striatal neural circuitry using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation to reduce irritability.”
CBMH promotes interdisciplinary clinical and translational research on conditions that affect the mind and brain. The center fosters transformational work that bridges existing departments, levels of analysis, disciplinary boundaries, and a diversity of perspectives, focusing on areas of clinical and translational neuroscience that are broader than any single disease. The pilot grant program seeks to advance research in clinical and translational neuroscience, with proposals that benefit patients in the near term.
The pilot project explores neuromodulation of irritability that spans many neuropsychiatric disorders. Impairing irritability is debilitating to affected individuals and families, to communities, and to the behavioral and mental health system. Despite the high public and personal health impact, very few evidence-based treatments exist for irritability, and there are no brain-based treatments with specific neural targets. This study investigates repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation as a non-invasive circuit-based neural modulation to test frontostriatal circuitry as a potential target to reduce irritability.
Steele is an addiction neuroscientist committed to developing treatments for individuals who suffer from substance use disorders. His lab targets dysregulated circuits in substance use disorders with transcranial magnetic stimulation to elicit neuroplastic change.
Tseng’s research focuses on understanding the brain mechanisms that mediate abnormal psychological processes associated with irritability and aggression in children and adolescents and how these behaviors and symptoms change over time.