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program in clinical and basic research on brain-behavior-drug interactions; become aware of the most recent, and often unpublished, advances in psychopharmacology; and meet and interact with internationally distinguished researchers and scientists.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!