News

Dr. Susan Perlman Awarded BRAINS Grant from the National Institute of Mental Health

Congratulations to Susan Perlman, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, on her receipt of a Biobehavioral Research Award for Innovative New Scientists (BRAINS) R01 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).  This prestigious R01 award is intended to support the research and career development of outstanding, exceptionally productive scientists who are in the early, formative stages of their career.  

With support from the award, Dr. Perlman will probe the neurodevelopment of irritability across the preschool period by examining changes in the neural circuitry underlying executive function, and neural synchronization between the parent and child, as moderators of clinical outcome in highly irritable children.  

Irritability is a significant mental health concern that exists in nearly every form of child psychopathology and spans the internalizing/externalizing gap.  Delineating which young children are exhibiting normative levels of irritability and which are presenting with early onset symptoms of mental disorder has proven to be a challenging task. Dr. Perlman's study addresses this important public health issue.  The goal of the project is to initiate a cutting-edge, neurodevelopmental investigation aimed at distinguishing aberrant from normative irritable trajectories as the foundation for future brain-based behavioral intervention for both individual children and parent-child dyads.