News

The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation has appointed Dr. Mary Phillips to its Scientific Council.  The Council is composed of 173 world-renowned scientists and is responsible for reviewing and selecting the most promising research ideas with the greatest potential to lead to breakthroughs. 

Dr. Phillips is the Pittsburgh Foundation-Emmerling Endowed Chair in Psychotic Disorders, and Professor in Psychiatry and Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh. She also leads directs the Clinical and Translational Affective Neuroscience Program in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry.Dr. Phillips? research focuses on using multimodal neuroimaging techniques to elucidate functional and structural abnormalities in emotion processing, reward processing and emotional regulation circuitries that are associated with specific psychiatric disorders and symptom dimensions, in individuals with mood and anxiety disorders. Another important area of study for Dr. Phillips is her research on identifying the neurodevelopmental trajectories in these circuitries that are associated with the development of such disorders in youth, and the extent to which these neuroimaging techniques can identify biomarkers reflecting underlying pathophysiologic processes that denote future risk for these disorders in as yet unaffected youth.  She has collaborated extensively with basic neuroscientists in translational studies of neural circuitry abnormalities in these disorders. Her work is now using neural circuitry identified in the above research as targets for novel neurositmulation interventions for individuals with, and those at risk for, bipolar disorder.