Understanding how the brain processes the sensory world, executes cognitive functions and gives rise to emotions, as well as uncovering how these functions deteriorate in disease, represent the greatest challenges of the 21st century. To meet this call, the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences has launched the Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience (CPN). The center will focus on understanding how genetic and epigenetic factors, immune activation, and environmental and social stress impact brain structure and function to contribute to the development and exacerbation of major mental illnesses including depression, schizophrenia, PTSD and addictions.
Ivan Alekseichuk, PhD’s is a cognitive neuroengineer with a fundamental interest in mental functions and their electrophysiological mechanisms. He leads Precision Neuromodulation Lab that investigates how neural communications encode cognition and emotions by combining non-invasive techniques for observing human brain functions (using electroencephalography and functional MRI) and modulating brain circuits (using transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial alternating current stimulation). The Lab works on the edge of several disciplines, drawing approaches from biological psychiatry, neuropsychology, and neural engineering. The Lab’s engineering focus is on developing personalized, adaptive, and closed-loop non-invasive brain stimulation techniques. Their human experimental program includes neuropsychological studies in mood regulation, decision-making, and memory as well as clinical trials in device-based interventional therapies for mental health.
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710 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 13-024 Chicago, IL 60611
Kynon Benjamin, PhD's research at The HEART-GeN lab is driven by a mission to address health disparities in brain disorders through an integrative approach that leverages genomic neuroscience. While the vast majority of the human genome is shared across populations, small variations unique to specific ancestral groups can influence gene regulation and expression. The lab focuses on identifying these genetic differences to better understand their role in brain disorders and to develop more effective, personalized treatments for communities affected by health inequities. This research highlights the complex interaction between genetic diversity and health outcomes in neuroscience. His predoctoral work centered on drug delivery and bioinformatics for Angelman syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental disorder. During his postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Benjamin expanded his expertise in computational analysis of neurological disorders. Dr. Benjamin focuses on how genetic ancestry influences brain traits, using advanced models like brain organoids.
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750 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 11-115 Chicago, IL 60611
Tina Boisseau, PhD, focuses on designing interventions to improve the long-term treatment and outcome of patients with emotional disorders, with particular emphasis on OCD and anxiety disorders. Boisseau leads the SOAR Lab, which focuses primarily on two intersecting areas: 1) the hypothesis-driven development and adaptation of empirically-supported treatments and 2) the use of translational research methods to identify critical, transdiagnostic mechanisms of dysfunction and barriers to recovery. A secondary focus of the laboratory is on eating disorders, particularly as they relate to other OC spectrum conditions.
Currently, in collaboration with researchers at Brown Medical School, the lab is investigating harm avoidance and incompleteness as dimensional endophenotypes in anxiety and obsessive-compulsive spectrum conditions (R01 NIMH R01 MH110449). They are also analyzing data from our naturalistic, prospective study of OCD.
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676 North Saint Clair Street Suite 1000 Chicago, IL 60611
Hongxin Dong, MD, PhD, has focused on a continuous and integrated program of investigating genetic alterations and environmental effects on neurodevelopment and aging, and their relevance to the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders, particularly Alzheimer’s disease. Ongoing NIH funded projects to discover novel molecular genetics and epigenetic mechanisms underlying neuropsychological disorders, using human antemortem clinical assessments and postmortem tissues, as well as animal models. The findings from the translational work will help in the development of new therapeutic strategies to slow disease onset and prevent progression.
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303 East Chicago Avenue Ward 7-103 Chicago, IL 60611
Hao Li, PhD completed his PhD in neuroscience with Thomas Jhou, PhD, at the Medical University of South Carolina, studying circuit mechanisms underlying punishment processing. In 2019, Li started his postdoctoral training with Kay Tye, PhD, at the Salk Institute, focusing on how neurotensin guides valence assignment in the amygdala during associative learning. Dr. Li's lab utilizes cutting-edge circuit and systems approaches to study how neural circuits and neuropeptides regulate emotion. Li's specific interests include 1) understanding how neuropeptides exert long-lasting neuromodulatory effects on circuits and regulate emotional states, 2) identifying risk factors contributing to addiction vulnerability and resilience, 3) investigating neural mechanisms underlying observational social aggression, and 4) exploring how brain-body connection can regulate emotion. The Li Lab's ultimate aim is to advance the quest for better treatments for mental health disorders.
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320 East Superior Street Suite 4-490 Chicago, IL 60611
Herbert Y. Meltzer, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Pharmacology and Physiology and Director of the Translational Neuropharmacology Program at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. He leads The Laboratory of Translational Neuropsychopharmacology which is in its 11th year at the Feinberg School of Medicine after previous stints at the University of Chicago, Case Western University and Vanderbilt University.It is celebrating its 54th year of continuous activity and funding The laboratory utilizes a mix of preclinical research, biological studies of patients, and clinical trials to develop new knowledge about theetiology, pathophysiology and treatment of schizophrenia, in particular, with some focus on major depression and bipolar disorder and the drugs used to understand and treat these illnesses. It recently licensed a novel drug platform based upon serotonin (5-HT) 2C agonism with potential numerous applications, including schizophrenia, anti-psychotic induced weight gain, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The lab has recently begun studies in rodents with psilocybin and related compounds to understand the psychedelic and psychotomimetic basis for their action, using microdialysis, behavioral and biochemical methods to contribute to the development of drugs which are selectively psychedelic. It is also studying the biological basis for neutraceutical drug, e.g. curcumin, efficacy.
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303 East Chicago Avenue Ward 7-101 Chicago, IL 60611
In an effort to identify more efficacious therapeutics, Reesha Patel, PhD seeks to investigate the mechanistic impact of previously understudied contributing factors including social stress and neuroimmune signaling on discrete neuronal circuits, and how they give rise to aberrant behavioral phenotypes associated with stress-related mental health disorders.
Current research questions of interest include:
How does social stress impact alcohol drinking?
Social stress is a prevailing factor in the lives of all social species and can motivate the misuse of reinforcing drugs such as alcohol, leading to the development of an alcohol use disorder (AUD) in susceptible individuals. An individual’s standing in a social hierarchy (i.e. social rank) is inversely related to alcohol consumption in rodents and humans, highlighting the conserved impact of subordination stress on motivation for alcohol. Social rank can also influence how individuals respond to challenges such as social isolation, which is a particularly profound stressor with increasing human relevance. Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms by which social experiences drive alcohol drinking could have important translational implications for AUD. Our lab is interested in asking:
What are mechanisms underlying social stress-associated alcohol drinking?
Can we reverse social stress-induced neuroadaptations to prevent escalated drinking?
How do cytokines influence circuits and behavior?
Immune signaling is an untapped link between neural activity and behavior. Immune mediators (e.g. cytokines) regulate sleep, mood, cognition, social interaction, and contribute to addiction and anxiety. In addition to their immunological role, cytokines operate as neuromodulators shaping all levels of neuronal computation from structural and functional synaptic integration to action potential firing and neurotransmitter release. Despite the substantial impact of cytokines on neurons, we do not know how cytokines influence circuit-level neural dynamics, which is essential to fundamentally understand how cytokines shape information processing in the brain. To fill this gap, we will address the central questions:
How do cytokines interact with neural circuits and representation underlying behavior?
Can we harness immune mechanisms to reprogram circuits to treat mental health disorders?
How do neuroimmune mechanisms contribute to social status-related susceptibility to mental health disorders?
Human socioeconomic status is one of the strongest predictors of health and mortality, however little is known regarding the neurobiological mechanisms predisposing individuals of low social status to mental health disorders including addiction and anxiety. One possibility is that neuroimmune mechanisms drive social status-related susceptibility. We will explore whether neuroimmune signatures can predict individual differences in behavioral phenotypes related to mental health disorders - to ultimately identify biomarkers and preventative therapeutic strategies.
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320 East Superior Street Suite 4-691 Chicago, IL 60611
The research program led by Sachin Patel, MD, PhD, focuses on the role of endocannabinoids in stress-induced neuroadaptation. Psychosocial stress is a key trigger for the development and exacerbation of a variety of psychiatric disorders. By understanding the molecular, structural and physiological adaptations in endocannabinoid signaling that occur in response to stress, they hope to uncover novel targets for drug development. In addition, the lab uses a variety of techniques to understand the role of endocannabinoids in the brain's response to stress, with the hope that these investigations will provide insight into the pathophysiology of stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders.
The lab aims to understand the role of the endocannabinoid 2-arachidonoylglycerol in the regulation of behavioral, endocrine and synaptic adaptations induced by stress. They use a variety of approaches including electrophysiology, optogenetics, calcium imaging, behavioral pharmacology and genetics combined with mouse behavior to address these questions. Elucidating how 2-AG signaling adapts to stress could reveal novel endocannabinoid-based approaches to the treatment of stress-relates psychiatric disorders.
Experience-dependent plasticity in amygdala circuits
The lab is interested in how amygdala circuits and distinct cell types are functionally organized to orchestrate behavioral responses to stress and how these circuits adapt in response to stress exposure. They utilize optogenetics, chemogenetics, electrophysiology and models of Pavlovian fear learning and extinction to address these questions.
Work in the lab of James Reilly, PhD, focuses on understanding how cognitive control processes — those processes that help guide thought and behavior based on internally generated goals — are altered in individuals with or at risk for various forms of psychopathology and those with acquired conditions, and how these processes are altered by various treatments. They use neuropsychological and translational laboratory and fMRI approaches adopted from the cognitive neurosciences to study the functional neural networks involved in the control of attention, working memory and behavioral responding and how these are altered in a range of clinical populations. They use these same approaches to evaluate impact of novel interventions (pharmacological or behavioral) targeting cognition and functional neural systems among healthy and clinically affected individuals, with the aim towards identifying promising treatments for cognitive impairment to bring to clinical populations. Students in their lab have the opportunity to learn diagnostic and clinical assessment procedures, standard neuropsychological methods for evaluating cognitive functioning and laboratory and fMRI based acquisition and analysis of neurophysiologic data.
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710 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 1315 Chicago, IL 60611
Luis Rosas-Vidal, MD, PhD, and his group study the neural dynamics of stress and aversive learning, how these processes are modulated by the opioid system and how they interact with the pursuit of rewards. More specifically, they use a myriad of techniques which include optogenetics, in vivo single cell calcium imaging, and pharmacological and genetic techniques in combination with multiple behavioral assays to explore the circuits involved in mediating stress and aversion; how these experiences are encoded at the neuronal level; how aversion is balanced with the pursuit of rewards; and how these processes are modulated by the opioid system. They believe their program will shine light on the pathophysiology of anxiety disorders and PTSD and their comorbidity with opioid use disorder.
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676 North Saint Clair Street Suite 1100 Chicago, IL 60611
Led by Stewart Shankman, PhD, the NEAR Lab's research focuses on the relation between depression and anxiety disorders and on novel treatments and risk factors for these difficult-to-treat emotional disorders. Depression and anxiety (aka "internalizing psychopathologies") are serious and prevalent public health problems with an economic burden of hundreds of billions of dollars that has been increasing in recent years. While moderately efficacious treatments have been developed for these conditions (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapies, SSRIs), treatment response is very heterogeneous. The group’s research attempts to (a) improve the understanding of internalizing psychopathologies and their risk factors, (b) identify specific targets for intervention and prevention efforts for specific individuals and (c) develop more effective interventions and preventative strategies to help people suffering from these conditions. The lab came to Northwestern in 2019 and is currently conducting multiple NIH-funded projects utilizing a variety of methods (e.g., fMRI, electrophysiology, laboratory behavioral paradigms, treatment development). Recently, their two largest R01s have focused on psychomotor disturbance in adults with depression, as well as social processes and smartphone use in adolescence with depression.
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680 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 1532 Chicago, IL 60611
Sandra Weintraub studies the determinants of “outlier conditions”, namely, unusually successful memory aging (Northwestern SuperAging Program) and of unusual forms of dementia (Primary Progressive Aphasia, behavioral variant Frontotemporal Dementia) that help elucidate resistance or regional brain vulnerability, respectively, to age-related neurodegenerative diseases. She collaborates with multidisciplinary researchers at Northwestern, nationally, and internationally on topics related to diagnosis of age-related cognitive decline.
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676 North Saint Clair Street Suite 1000 Chicago, IL 60611
