Publications

Tharick Pascoal, MD, PhD (Associate Professor of Psychiatry) is an internationally recognized expert on the imaging and fluid biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. He recently published two papers examining the multifaceted but interactive nature of Alzheimer’s disease pathology. “Microglia and astrocytes are glial cells that act together and play a major role in the immune response in the human...

Over the past few decades, neuroimaging research in bipolar disorder has identified neural differences underlying cognitive and emotional processing. However, substantial clinical and methodological heterogeneity across neuroimaging experiments (resulting from differences in healthcare systems, diagnostic subtypes, mood state, treatment response, comorbidity, chronicity, and severity)—as well as additional factors...

Department of Psychiatry investigators focused on Alzheimer’s Research— Victor Villemagne, MD (Professor of Psychiatry); Tharick Pascoal, MD, PhD (Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology); and Thomas Karikari, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry)—have recently published studies improving our understanding of biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease. Plasma Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein Is Associated with 18F...

Alterations in markers of cortical gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) signaling are among the most widely replicated findings in postmortem brain studies of schizophrenia. In the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, consistent findings of lower levels of gene products related to GABA neuron signaling indicates that inhibitory neurotransmission signaling is weaker in people with schizophrenia. However, clarity regarding...

Rates of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and suicide have increased among adolescents over the past 15 years, with a sharp increase among Black and Hispanic youths. Moreover, there has been an increase in presentations to pediatric emergency departments for adolescent suicidal behavior that has accelerated since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. A growing consensus contends that screening patients in...

Cognitive deficits, among the most debilitating clinical features of schizophrenia, might reflect, at least in part, circuit dysfunction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In schizophrenia, layer 3 pyramidal neurons of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex exhibit deficits in markers of excitatory synaptic inputs that are thought to disrupt the patterns of neural network activity essential for cognitive function...