Brian A Coffman, PhD

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry

Current Appointments

  • Director, Clinical Neurophysiology Research Laboratory
  • Director of Research, UPMC Brain Mapping Center

Areas of Expertise

  • Psychosis
  • Substance Use Disorders
  • Neuromodulation
Brian A Coffman, PhD
Expertise & Interests Selected Publications Education & Credentials Related News

Expertise & Interests

Research Interests

Auditory neurophysiology in schizophrenia; Non-invasive brain stimulation in psychiatry; Cognitive dysfunction in psychosis

Education Interests

Research mentorship; Statistical methods

Selected Publications

  1. Coffman BA, Curtis M, Seebold D, Kocsis J, Dani A, Lpez-Caballero F, Sklar A, Salisbury DF (2024). Long-latency auditory evoked response amplitudes at first episode of psychosis predict six-month recovery in positive symptom severity. Psychiatry Research. 339:116094.
  2. Coffman BA, Curtis MT, Sklar A, Seebold D, & Salisbury DF (2023). Recovery of auditory evoked response attentional gain modulation following the first psychotic episode indexes improvements in symptom severity. Human Brain Mapping, 44(9), 3706 3716. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.26306
  3. Coffman BA, Ren X, Longenecker L, Torrence N, Fishel V, Seebold D, Wang Y, Curtis M & Salisbury DF (2022) Aberrant Attentional Modulation of the Auditory Steady State Response (ASSR) is Related to Auditory Hallucination Severity in the First-Episode Schizophrenia-Spectrum. Journal of Psychiatric Research. 151, 188-196
  4. Coffman BA, Haas G, Olson C, Cho R, Ghuman AS & Salisbury DF (2020). Lateralized evoked responses in parietal cortex demonstrate visual short-term memory deficits in first-episode schizophrenia. Journal of Psychiatric Research (In Press).
  5. Coffman BA, Clark VP, Parasuraman R. Battery powered thought: Enhancement of attention, learning, and memory in healthy adults using transcranial direct current stimulation, NeuroImage 2014 85:3, 895-908doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.07.083
  6. Coffman BA, Torrence N, Murphy TK, Bebko G, Graur S, Chase HW, Salisbury DF, & Phillips ML (2021). Trait Sensation Seeking is Associated with Heightened Beta-Band Oscillatory Dynamics over Left Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex during Reward Expectancy. Journal of Affective Disorders. 292, 67-74.
  7. Coffman BA, Kodituwakku P, Kodituwakku EL, Romero L, Sharadamma NM, Stone D, Stephen JM. Primary visual response (M100) delays in adolescents with FASD as measured with MEG, Human Brain Mapping 2013 34:11, 2852-2862, doi: 10.1002/hbm.22110
  8. Bertocci M, Chase H, Graur S, Stiffler R, ..., Coffman B, Greenberg,B, Phillips M (2019). The impact of targeted cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation on reward circuitry and affect in Bipolar Disorder, Molecular Psychiatry, doi: 10.1038/s41380-019-0567-1
  9. Coffman BA, Candelaria-Cook FT, Stephen JM. Unisensory and multisensory responses in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD): Effects of spatial congruence, Neuroscience 2020 430, 34-46doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2020.01.013
  10. Coffman BA, Haigh SM, Murphy TK, Salisbury DF. Event-related potentials demonstrate deficits in acoustic segmentation in schizophrenia, Schizophrenia Research, 2016 173:1-2, 109-115doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2016.03.012
  11. Coffman BA & Salisbury DF, MEG Methods: A Primer of Basic MEG Analysis. In Neuroimaging in Schizophrenia (Kubicki M, Shenton ME,eds.) Springer International Publishing; 2020, 191-210doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-35206-6_11
  12. Clark VP, Coffman BA, Trumbo MC, Wegele AR. An Evolutionary Perspective on Attentional Processes. In Cognitive Electrophysiology of Attention, Signals ofMind, Academic Press (Elsevier) 2013

Education & Credentials

Education & Training

Education
PhD, Experimental Psychology, University of New Mexico, Arts and Sciences
Education
MS, Psychology, University of New Mexico, Arts and Sciences
Postdoctoral
Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Professional Affiliations

  • Board Member and Treasurer, EEG and Clinical Neuroscience Society
  • Member, Schizophrenia International Research Society

Selected Honors & Awards

  • Young Investigator Award, EEG & Clinical Neuroscience Society
  • Strick Prize for Best Research Paper, Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition

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