Upcoming Events:
· Monday, February 18th, Department of Psychiatry with Shin-ichi Kano, MD, PhD, “Brain disorders in a dish: toward a mechanistic understanding of mental illness”
· Tuesday, February 19th, Department of Psychiatry with Minae Niwa, PhD, “Developmental trajectory of brain maturation and adult behavior: relevance to mental illness”
· Thursday, February 21st, Department of Psychology Developmental Brown Bag with Diane L. Williams, PhD, CCC-SLP, “Language Processing in Autism: Insights from Functional Imaging”
· Thursday, February 21st, Department of Psychiatry with Maria Bleil, PhD, “Reproductive aging over the life course: Understanding inter-relations between ovarian function, psychological health, and cardiovascular risk”
· Friday, February 22nd, Department of Psychiatry with Yanhua Huang, PhD, “Sleep Regulation of Reward: Neural Adaptations in the Nucleus Accumbens”
________________________________
Special Guest Speaker
Sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry
Shin-ichi Kano, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Johns Hopkins University
“Brain disorders in a dish: toward a mechanistic understanding of mental illness”
Date: Monday, February 18th, 2013
Time: 12:00-1:00 PM
Location: Biomedical Science Tower
16th Floor Conference Room; Rm 1695
________________________________
Special Guest Speaker
Sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry
Minae Niwa, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
John Hopkins University
“Developmental trajectory of brain maturation and adult behavior: relevance to mental illness”
Date: Tuesday, February 19th, 2013
Time: 12:00-1:00 PM
Location: Biomedical Science Tower
16th Floor Conference Room; Rm 1695
________________________________
Developmental Brown Bag
Featuring
Diane L. Williams, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Associate Professor, Department of Speech-Language Pathology
Duquesne University
Language Processing in Autism: Insights from Functional Imaging
Thursday, February 21, 2013
12 – 1 p.m.
Martin Room (4127) Sennott Square
Department of Psychology
Abstract: Behavioral measures have provided limited understanding of the bases for the language differences in verbal, high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). These individuals frequently score within the average range on standardized language measures even as they have difficulty with the comprehension and use of language in daily life. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a noninvasive methodology that has provided an unprecedented opportunity to examine the underlying neural processing while an individual performs a cognitive task. Functional MRI studies with young children, adolescents, and adults with ASD, using a variety of language tasks, have revealed differences in the way individuals with ASD process language even without differences in behavioral performance. These results, though preliminary, provide insight into the challenges associated with ASD in the comprehension and production of language.
NB: You are receiving this as part of Portia Miller’s unofficial developmental mailing list, not the Psychology department’s official mailing, which will go out Tuesday. If you know of anyone else who might be interested in the talk, please forward. If you know of anyone who should be added to this contact list in the future, contact Portia (plm11@pitt.edu).
Questions about Developmental Brown Bags? Contact Jennifer Ganger (jganger@pitt.edu) or Portia Miller (plm11@pitt.edu)
________________________________
Special Guest Speaker
Sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry
Maria Bleil, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
University of California San Francisco
“Reproductive aging over the life course: Understanding inter-relations between ovarian function, psychological health, and cardiovascular risk”
Date: Thursday, February 21st, 2013
Time: 10:00 -11:00 AM
Location: Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic
4th Floor; Room 413
________________________________
Department of Psychiatry Lecture Series
Researchers on the Rise Lectures
Friday, February 22, 2013
12:00 pm
Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic 2nd Floor Auditorium
Sleep Regulation of Reward: Neural Adaptations in the Nucleus Accumbens
Yanhua Huang, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Dr. Huang was appointed to the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh in 2012. During her graduate work at Johns Hopkins University and her postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School she studied synaptic transmission and plasticity as regulated by glial glutamate transporters and immune molecules in the context of learning and memory. As a postdoctoral fellow at Washington State University, Dr. Huang began to focus on neural plasticity within the brain reward circuitry following exposure to addictive drugs, from which she has developed an interest in the cellular and molecular mechanism by which sleep regulates reward seeking behaviors. With support from a career development award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, she is pursuing research designed to combine electrophysiological approach and behavioral assays to investigate the links between sleep and reward seeking.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this lecture, participants will be able to:
1. Describe the high comorbidity between sleep disorders and psychiatric diseases including depression and drug addiction.
2. Conceptualize sleep deprivation as a useful tool for probing the mechanisms underlying sleep regulation of emotion/motivation.
3. Understand that sleep may impact emotion/motivation by regulating neural activity within the brain reward circuitry, including the nucleus accumbens (in rodents).
________________________________
Using Proteomics Strategies to Identify Vulnerabilities to Addiction and Develop Novel Treatments
Mary Torregrossa, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Dr. Torregrossa earned her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan and completed postgraduate neuroscience training at the Medical University of South Carolina and postgraduate training in psychiatry at Yale University. Her research focuses on determining the neurobiological mechanisms underlying vulnerability to addiction and identifying new treatments to prevent relapse in abstinent addicts. In addition, Dr. Torregrossa is interested in how stress during vulnerable developmental periods affects the development of the prefrontal cortex and associated circuits, and how this may underlie risk for certain psychiatric disorders. She is investigating the phosphoproteomics of extinction and reconsolidation of drug memories with support from a federal career development award and has published in numerous scientific journals including the Journal of Neuroscience and Neuropsychopharmacology.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this lecture, participants will be able to:
1. Conceptualize how stress during adolescence, through elevated glucocorticoids, affects risk for alcoholism-related behaviors.
2. Understand how proteomics techniques can be used to study drug addiction/alcoholism.
3. Understand how differential phosphorylation of proteins may be predictive of increased risk or resilience to having alcohol use disorders.
Continuing Education Credit: The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine designates this educational activity for a maximum of 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits TM. Each physician should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. Other health care professionals are awarded .15 continuing education units (CEUs), which are equal to 1.5 contact hours. In accordance with Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education requirements on disclosure, information about relationships of presenters with commercial interests (if any) will be included in materials which will be distributed at the time of the conference. WPIC is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education for psychologists. WPIC maintains responsibility for this program and its contents. This program is being offered for 1.5 continuing education credits.
Please contact Jeanie Knox Houtsinger at knoxjv@upmc.edu for more information regarding this lecture. We also invite you to visit our web site at www.psychiatry.pitt.edu for more information on lectures and educational events sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry