Publications

When children and adolescents experience trauma, they are at risk for depression and anxiety. One way that this can occur is through trauma-induced impairment of the ventral striatum, a key region of the brain associated with reward learning. Impaired reward processing is associated with depression and anxiety in adolescence and adulthood, and young people with depression experience abnormally low ventral striatum...

Department of Psychiatry researchers and their colleagues recently published findings from the largest study to date for whole-genome sequencing in autism in the journal Science. The article is one of the first papers released in the initial round of results to emerge from the National Institute of Mental Health’s PsychENCODE Consortium — a nationwide research effort that seeks to decipher how noncoding DNA, often...

In many disadvantaged communities, where mental health professionals are scarce, training local lay counselors chosen from the very communities they serve offers an effective, boots-on-the-ground approach to preventing depression among older adults. University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry investigators, led by Professor Emeritus Dr. Charles F. Reynolds III, in collaboration with researchers from Goa...

It is widely known that adequate amounts of high-quality sleep are essential to good physical, mental, and cognitive health, but exactly how sleep contributes to the various aspects of health remains unknown. A large body of evidence suggests that deep sleep, also known as slow-wave sleep, is particularly important for cognitive health, a topic discussed by Department faculty members in a review recently published...

Two pivotal studies by a Department of Psychiatry researcher were recognized in the November 2018 commemorative issue of the journal Menopause. The papers helped overturn a long-held idea that hot flashes are a harmless annoyance of midlife by demonstrating that they are associated with risks for cardiovascular disease. Rebecca Thurston, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, Clinical and Translational Science, Epidemiology...

The brains of people with early-onset Alzheimer’s and Down syndrome share a distinct pattern of amyloid buildup that is not seen in late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Future studies on the origin of this unique pattern could reveal important mechanisms of amyloid beta accumulation and possibly targets for early intervention. People with early-onset Alzheimer's disease often develop symptoms of cognitive decline in...