Faculty

Judith K Morgan, PhD

Judith K Morgan, PhD

Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology

Contact Details

3811 O'Hara St.
Pittsburgh
 
PA
 
15213
Email

Education & Training

PhD
Clinical Psychology, University of Delaware, College of Arts and Sciences
Clinical Psychology, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC

Professional Affiliations

Member, Society for Research on Child Development
Member, International Society for Research on Child and Adolescent Psychology

Selected Honors & Awards

Associate Member, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology
NARSAD Young Investigator Award, Brain & Behavior Research Foundation
Fellowship Award, Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation

Research Interests

Children at familial risk for depression; Behavior inhibition
Selected Research Publications & Products
  1. Morgan JK, Santosa H, Conner KK, Fridley RM, Forbes EE, Iyengar S, Joseph HM, & Huppert TJ. Mother-child neural synchronization is time linked to mother-child positive affective matching. Soc Cog Aff Neurosci, 2023
  2. Morgan JK, Eckstrand KL, Silk JS, Olino TM, Ladouceur CD, & Forbes EE. Maternal response to positive affect moderates the impact of familial risk for depression on ventral striatal response to winning reward in 6- to 8-year-old children. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 2022, 7, 824-832
  3. Morgan JK, Silk JS, Woods BK & Forbes EE. (2019). Differential neural responding to affective stimuli in 6- to 8-year old children at high familial risk for depression: Associations with behavioral reward seeking. Journal of Affective Disorders, 257, 445-453.
  4. Morgan JK, Shaw DS & Forbes EE. (2014). Maternal depression and warmth during childhood predict age 20 neural response to reward. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 53, 108-117.
  5. Morgan JK, Olino TM, McMakin DM, Ryan N & Forbes EE. (2013). Neural response to reward as a predictor of increases in depressive symptoms in adolescence. Neurobiology of Disease, 52, 66-74.

Clinical Interests

Child & adolescent mood & anxiety disorders; Cognitive behavioral therapy

Three Psychiatry Postdoctoral Research Trainees Receive University of Pittsburgh Postdoctoral Association Awards

Drs. Ligia Antezana, Carolina Soares and Lindsay Taraban

Congratulations to Ligia Antezana, PhD; Carolina Soares, PhD; and Lindsay Taraban, PhD, who received Best Poster Presentation Awards at the University of Pittsburgh Postdoctoral Association 2025 Postdoctoral Data & Dine Symposium. Dr. Antezana, Dr. Soares, and Dr. Taraban were counted among 11 total award recipients selected from 130 submissions. Dr. Antezana is a clinical psychologist who conducts research in the...

Judith Morgan, PhD, Selected into Transforming Biomedical Research and Academic Faculty Through Leadership Opportunities, Training, and Mentorship Program

Judith Morgan, PhD

We are delighted to announce that Judith Morgan, PhD (Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology) has been selected into the highly competitive Transforming Biomedical Research and Academic Faculty Through Leadership Opportunities, Training, and Mentorship (TRANSFORM) Program. TRANSFORM is a national leadership development program, funded by the National Institute for General Medical Sciences, with the goal...

The Developmental Affective Neuroscience Symposium: Presenting Translational Research in Developmental Psychopathology

The Developmental Affective Neuroscience Symposium Collage

The Developmental Affective Neuroscience Symposium (DANS) presents recent translational research in developmental psychopathology. The 2023 DANS theme was “ Neurodevelopment of Regulatory Systems: A Focus on Emotions and Motivation,” featuring research focused on the development of neural networks and circuitries implicated in regulating or modulating neural response to emotionally or motivationally salient...

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience: Mother–Child Neural Synchronization Is Time Linked to Mother–Child Positive Affective State Matching

Researcher and Child with Headsets On

In the first years of life, affective state matching, in which mothers and children imitate and elaborate on each other’s positive emotional expressions—through shared smiling, mutual eye gaze, back-and-forth vocalizations, and joint play—is a hallmark of early mother-child interactions. In addition, positive affective state matching also appears to promote child emotional self-regulation through the process in...

New Research: Maternal Response to Positive Affect Moderates the Impact of Familial Risk for Depression on Ventral Striatal Response to Winning Reward in Children

Morgan et al. Biological Psychiatry 2022

Adolescent offspring of depressed parents show diminished response to reward in the ventral striatum. Though factors associated with neural alterations in childhood are poorly understood, altered reward response may emerge before adolescence in offspring at familial risk for depression. A group of investigators, including Pitt Psychiatry scientists Judith Morgan, PhD (Associate Professor of Psychiatry and...