Our research identifies risk and resilience factors, biomarkers, and mechanisms of brain disorders. We study neuropsychiatric disorders and traits across the lifespan, from early developmental disorders like autism spectrum disorders and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, to conditions typically onsetting in early adulthood like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and suicidality, to late-onset neurdegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease. Across this developmental range, we also study resilience, or the ability for people to stay mentally healthy despite having risk factors for brain disorders. Our long-term goal is to identify the ways in which risk and resilience factors operate to make people sick or keep them healthy, so that we can develop interventions that will reduce the incidence, prevalence, morbidity, and mortality associated with mental illness.

Profiling the Functional Genetics of Health and Disease using BrainGENIE: The Brain Gene Expression and Network Imputation Engine

• PI: Stephen J. Glatt
• The goal of this project is to develop and validate algorithms that allow for the imputation and prediction of gene-expression levels in ten different brain regions based on transcriptome characteristics measured and derived from peripheral blood samples.

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 The Alcohol-Pain Connection: Mechanisms and Genetic/Psychological Correlates.

• Co-PI: Glatt
• The goal of the study is to examine several complex and potentially bidirectional relations between pain and alcohol in one overarching model. The specific aims are: 1) to test both pharmacological and expectancy effects in acute alcohol analgesia among humans; (2) test pain as a proximal antecedent of urge to drink and ad lib alcohol consumption, and to test whether acute analgesic effects predict pain-induced alcohol urge/consumption; (3) to test associations between study outcomes and candidate genetic polymorphisms that have been implicated in pain-alcohol processes; and (4) to conduct exploratory analyses of gender and pain relevant cognitive-affective factors as moderators of these outcomes.

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Genetic Predictors, Transcriptomic Biomarkers, & Neurobiological Signatures of Resilience to Alzheimer's Disease.

• The goal of this project is to identify genes, molecules, and brain structures that protect some people from their otherwise-elevated risk for Alzheimer’s disease.