16th Annual Scientific Research Symposium

Scientific Research Symposium

Friday, April 5, 2013
9:15 am – 12:30 pm

Biobehavioral Mechanisms of Intervention for Mood and Anxiety Disorders

Douglas Mennin, PhD
Department of Psychology
Hunter College, CUNY
Co-chair

Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD
Department of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School

Center for Human Genetic Research
Massachusetts General Hospital
Co-chair

The Three Mechanisms

The Scientific Research Symposium will address three mechanisms of intervention for mood and anxiety disorders:

Extinction Learning
Neurobiological Modulation
Cognitive and Neural Targets of Psychosocial Intervention

Despite advances in psychosocial and pharmacological interventions for anxiety and mood disorders, a considerable subgroup of remains of refractory patients, or those who do not improve or who worsen to baseline levels over the long term. Further, it has been unclear what the essential elements of successful therapies are and for whom they work best.

In the past few years an exciting surge of research has been translating basic findings of genetic, neurobiological, physiological, and behavioral analysis to improve our understanding of various psychopathological conditions. Consistent with this translational emphasis, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has articulated two important facets of its strategic plan.

The NIMH Research Domain Criteria initiative aims to identify transdiagnostic, biological processes that underlie psychopathology and to classify it on functional grounds.
The NIMH treatment personalization initiative seeks to more deliberately study the factors that predict who will benefit from a given treatment and then systematically determine ways to optimize care for more patients and clients to enjoy the benefits.

As a result of these trends and initiatives, interest has increased in honing treatments to target underlying mechanisms more directly. Three areas that have shown promising advances are in extinction learning, direct neurobiological modulation, and mechanism-targeted nonpharmacological interventions.

Extinction Learning

Mohammed R. Milad, MD
Department of Psychiatry
Massachusetts General Hospital and
Harvard Medical School

Kerry Ressler, MD, PhD
Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Emory University

Neurobiological Modulation

Ronald S. Duman, PhD
Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities
Department of Psychiatry
Yale University

Carlos A. Zarate, Jr., MD
Experimental Therapeutics and Pathophysiology Branch
Division of Intramural Research Programs
National Institute of Mental Health