Publications

Many older adults experience sleep difficulties associated with insomnia. Difficulties with staying asleep are thought to arise partially from reduced sleep depth. Sleep depth can be operationalized as low frequency slow-wave (.5-4 Hz) electroencephalographic (EEG) activity during sleep. However, studies to date have not shown a consistent pattern of EEG differences between individuals with and without insomnia...

Young people who have parents or siblings with bipolar disorder are at higher risk for developing this disorder than are individuals without a family history. Among those high-risk youth, mood lability—rapid and frequent mood changes that can be disproportionate to current circumstances—is associated with psychosocial impairment and often predictive of future onset of bipolar disorder. A research team including...

In a hundred-year-old film, a man is seen looking at a bowl of soup, then at a child in a coffin, then at a woman on a divan. While the film shows the exact same footage of the man three times, interspersed with the other images, audiences perceived that the man reacted to each scene with separate and distinct facial expressions. This phenomenon suggested that audience interpretations of his expression were...

Individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder often report leading stressful and tumultuous lives. Research suggests that they are likely to experience more prospective stressors (known as stress generation), and more emotional reactivity following those stressors (known as stress reactivity) than individuals without borderline personality disorder, including those diagnosed with other psychiatric...

How can a better understanding of heightened attention bias to threat help the development of interventions to treat anxiety? In general, individuals with anxiety disorders give greater initial attention to perceived threats, with some maintaining negative attention bias during sustained exposure to threatening stimuli. These temporal stages of attention bias may exert unique influences on anxious vigilance...

Are individuals who experience childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at greater risk for co-occurring problematic alcohol use and depressive symptoms in adulthood? In a recent study, researchers including Pitt Psychiatry investigators Frances Wang, PhD, Sarah Pedersen, PhD, Bernie Devlin, PhD, and Brooke Molina, PhD, examined heterogeneity among those with childhood ADHD that could be associated...