Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center

Mission

The Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center (NRC) is a clinical neuroscience research facility that was established in 2001. The Olin NRC’s mission is to conduct neuroscience research of psychiatric illnesses and rapidly translate that research into new and effective treatments.

Research Portfolio

• Brain imaging (structural MRI, functional MRI, MR Spectroscopy, EEG, oculomotor) in multiple psychiatric conditions. Link to current studies
• Laboratory Studies of Alcohol and Marijuana and other pharmacologic challenge studies in healthy people.Link to current studies
• Genetic, imaging, epidemiologic and cognitive assessment to identify individuals at risk for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or alcoholism.
• Treatment outcome and program evaluation research in adolescent and adult psychosis programs.

Current large-scale studies include:

• NIDDK - Predicting the outcome of bariatric surgery using pre-surgical neuroimaging.
• NHTSA - Examining the feasibility of a field sobriety test for cannabis-intoxicated drivers.
• NIAAA - Functional neuroimaging of alcoholism vulnerability in individuals family history positive or negative for alcoholism, using selective NMDA mGluR5 receptor drugs. (Part of Dr. John Krystal’s Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcoholism.
• NIDA - Neuroscience of marijuana-impaired driving – studies acute effects of marijuana on fMRI tasks related to motor vehicle driving, and blood and oral fluid measures of THC.
• NIMH - Bipolar/Schizophrenia Network for Intermediate Phenotypes (B-SNIP) investigates the longitudinal stability of B-SNIP biotypes and biomarkers in psychotic disorders to help establish a potentially clinically useful approach to the classification of psychotic disorders using biological data.
• NIMH - Neural architecture of social emotional processing and regulation in autism spectrum disorder delineates the temporal dynamics of the neural networks observing social perception, cognition and regulation in ASD.
• NIMH - BioSORTD (Biological Subtyping On Reward Task data in ADHD) seeks evidence for computational-modeling informed reward subgroups in adolescent ADHD to support the idea there are several discrete biologically defined pathways to ADHD symptom expression.
• NIDA - Effects of chronic THC and CBD use on brain glutamate measured through MR spectroscopy.
• NIMH - Neurofeedback cognitive training for adolescents and adults with psychosis.
• NIMH - Psychosis Dysconnectivity examines functional MRI connections in psychotic illnesses focusing on the African American population.

Leadership: Lab Directors

• Godfrey Pearlson, MD , Professor of Psychiatry, Center Director, Dir. COBBRA Lab
• Michael Stevens, PhD , Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Dir. Neurodevelopmental Lab
• Michal Assaf, MD , Associate Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, Dir. Autism/Functional Mapping Lab
• Mirjana Domakonda, MD , Assistant Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, Dir. Clinical Trials Unit
• Jimmy Choi, PsyD , Senior Scientist, Hartford Healthcare Behavioral Health Network, Dir. Cognitive Rehabilitation Services Lab
• David Glahn, PhD , Associate Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, Dir. ADAPTING Lab