Archives 2023

Carmen Andreescu, MD, (Professor of Psychiatry), and Andrea Goldschmidt, PhD, (Associate Professor of Psychiatry), have been elected to the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) Scientific Council. The BBRF is the top non-governmental funder of mental health research grants. The Scientific Council reviews and selects the most promising research proposals with the greatest potential to lead to breakthroughs in mental health research.

Dr. Andreescu is an internationally recognized expert in the clinical treatment of late-life anxiety and depression. Her research focuses on the affective and cognitive neuroscience of anxiety and depression among the elderly, as well as markers of treatment response in anxiety and depression among this population. Her groundbreaking research has demonstrated the important clinical distinction between worry and anxiety, and that some components of anxiety in older adults have different clinical and functional implications.

Read the full article here

Dr. Gerlach received his PhD in nuclear engineering and radiological sciences from the University of Michigan College of Engineering, then came to Pittsburgh for postdoctoral research training on the Department of Psychiatry’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded Clinical and Translational Research Training in Late-Life Mood Disorders program. 

With a background in mathematics and computational modeling, Dr. Gerlach’s current research focuses on developing multi-modal neuroimaging tools to investigate the pathophysiology and treatment response in anxiety and mood disorders. He currently leads an NIMH-funded K01 career development award that aims to integrate complementary network measures from structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging with clinical measures to generate biologically relevant features that can improve prediction of treatment outcome in late-life depression.

Read the official announcement here.

Dr. Gerlach was awarded a K01 by the National Institute of Mental Health! His study, Individual Multimodal Pathway Statistics for Predicting Treatment Response in Late-life Depression, will integrate complementary structural and functional measures of brain networks with important clinical measures to generate biologically relevant features for predicting treatment outcome in late-life depression.

In our group’s latest paper in Molecular Psychiatry entitled “Sex matters: acute functional connectivity changes as markers of remission in late-life depression differ by sex,” we investigated how early changes in intrinsic neural activity after initiating antidepressant treatment could be used to predict remission from late-life depression and the role of biological sex in this dynamic.

Surprisingly, we were able to better predict remission by training separate random forest models on males and females than using a combined model that included sex as a variable. Deeper investigation revealed sex-specific patterns of change that keyed on a few specific regions for males and a much broader network for females. The caudate nucleus—an important region in the reward network—stood out as a prominent exception to this observation, providing the most predictive value for both males and females.

To read the full paper, click here

Dr. Helmet Karim has been granted one of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology’s 2023 Travel Awards!

The American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) annually selects distinguished young scientists in the field of neuropsychopharmacology to be part of our travel award program. These travel awards offer an opportunity to attend an outstanding scientific program in clinical and basic research on brain-behavior-drug interactions; become aware of the most recent, and often unpublished, advances in psychopharmacology; and meet and interact with internationally distinguished researchers and scientists.

This means the Dr. Karim will be attending the 62nd Annual Meeting of ACNP in Tampa, Florida fully paid for! Congratulations, Helmet!

The 21st annual Department of Psychiatry Research Day, held on June 8, 2023 was the biggest Research Day ever, attended by more than 500 faculty members, trainees, and staff, and featuring 160 posters at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. 

Carmen Andreescu, MD, received the 2023 Outstanding Mentor Award for achievements including mentorship of postdoctoral scholars, bioengineering and clinical psychology graduate students, MD and MD/PhD students, and postdoctoral fellows, as well as her co-leadership of the Department’s National Institute of Mental Health-funded Clinical and Translational Research Training in Geriatric Mental Health T32 postdoctoral research training program.

Please read the full article here

Our PhD student, Antonija Kolobaric, and postdoc, Andrew Gerlach, attended the Society for Biological Psychiatry conference in San Diego, where both presented posters. Toni’s was particularly well received, it no small part due to the ingenious title: “Number Two When Feeling Blue: Gut Microbiome Differences in Cognitive Decline and Late-Life Depression.” While unable to match the popularity, Andrew still had excellent discussions on his poster “Disentangling the Age Effect on the Relationship between White Matter hyperintensities, Executive function, and Worry in Late-Life.” They also took a little time to enjoy beautiful weather with a bit of hiking, rock climbing, paddle boarding around San Diego.

More photos below:

The New York Times recently interviewed Dr. Carmen Andreescu regarding her work in FINA and RAW. An excerpt below:

Underdiagnosis also stems from older patients’ reluctance to ascribe their problems to psychological issues. “Some resent a label of ‘anxious,’” Dr. Andreescu said. “They’d rather call it ‘high stress,’ something that doesn’t indicate psychological weakness.”

And since aging involves genuine sources of fear and distress, from falls to bereavement, people may see anxiety as normal, as Ms. Tilton did.

It has serious consequences, however. “It has an impact on the health of our brains and our bodies,” Dr. Andreescu said. Studies have demonstrated connections between anxiety and cardiovascular disease, with greatly increased risks of coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke and death. Patients with higher anxiety levels are more likely to engage in substance abuse, too.

The full article can be found here