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UNC Awarded $3.9-million grant to study perimenopausal-onset anhedonia and psychosis with simultaneous PET-MR

January 4, 2022
Gabriel Dichter (UNC Psychiatry), Crystal Schiller (UNC Psychiatry), and David Lalush (Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering) have been awarded a 5-year $3.9-million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to use simultaneous positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging (PET-MR) to examine the effects of estradiol on reward...

7 Ways to Beat Holiday Season Stress with our own Dr. Crystal Schiller!

December 16, 2021

Dr. Rebecca Bottom has been named the new Associate Vice Chair of Quality and Safety for the Department of Psychiatry!

December 15, 2021

Carolina Stress Initiative honored with NeuroSpark Award from UNC Neuroscience Center! “Tracking Arousal Responses with a BOP (Biometric Ocular Photometer)” Drs. Jose Rodriquez-Romaguera, Nicolas Pegard*, Rebecca Grzadzinski, Anthony Zannas

December 15, 2021

Caregiver responsiveness as a mechanism to improve social communication in toddlers: Secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial

December 3, 2021
This study examined data from a randomized controlled trial to determine whether improvements in child social communication skills were mediated through changes in caregiver responsiveness. Results indicated that as caregiver responsiveness increased over 8 months of intervention, the child’s social communication skills also increased, suggesting that caregiver responsiveness may be...

Pre-symptomatic intervention for autism spectrum disorder (ASD): defining a research agenda

December 3, 2021
Brain and behavioral markers at 6 and 12 months of age have shown to be predictive of later autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This work proposes a empirically supported research agenda for the development of a very early intervention for infants at very high likelihood of developing ASD symptoms, that can...

Multimodel Order Independent Component Analysis: A Data-Driven Method for Evaluating Brain Functional Network Connectivity Within and Between Multiple Spatial Scales

December 3, 2021
This manuscript reports on an innovative approach to examine brain functional network connectivity using an independent component analysis (ICA)-based approach. We evaluated the approach by studying group differences in the context of a study of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) data collected from schizophrenia (SZ) individuals and healthy controls...

The role of sex in the persistent effects of adolescent alcohol exposure on behavior and neurobiology in rodents

December 3, 2021
Adolescence is a period of dynamic neural development, and research has determined that some of the consequences of binge drinking can be long lasting with deficits persisting into adulthood in a variety of cognitive-behavioral tasks. Here we review several of the consequences of adolescent ethanol exposure in light of sex...

Chronic alcohol exposure during critical periods of development differentially impacts cognitive flexibility and related circuitry

December 3, 2021
Binge alcohol exposure impacts brain function and behavior, and this impact is often more pronounced when it occurs during developmental periods such as adolescence or fetal development. This review focuses on how binge alcohol drinking in people and exposure in animals impairs cognitive flexibility and the brain mechanisms underlying that...

Chair, Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody speaks with CBS 17 over mental health concerns in children and adolescence.

November 29, 2021