Faculty

Erika E Forbes, PhD

Erika E Forbes, PhD

Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology

Contact Details

121 Meyran Avenue, Room 319
Pittsburgh
 
PA
 
15213
Phone (412) 383-5438
Email
Website
ANDP Lab

Education & Training

PhD
Clinical Psychology, University of Pittsburgh
Clinical Affective Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh

Professional Affiliations

Fellow, Association for Psychological Science
Member, American Psychological Association
Member, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology
Member, Society for Research in Psychopathology
Member, Association for Psychological Science
Member, FLUX: Congress on Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

Selected Honors & Awards

Eva King Killam Research Award, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology
Emerging Mentor Award, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
NARSAD Independent Investigator Award, Brain & Behavior Research Foundation
NARSAD Young Investigator Award, Brain & Behavior Research Foundation
Fellowship Award, Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation

Research Interests

Clinical affective neuroscience; Reward & emotion neural circuitry in adolescents; Brain development
Selected Research Publications & Products
  1. Reddy A, Bertocci M, Gupta T, Eckstrand KL, Rengasamy M, Forbes EE. Weighing the predictive role of neural factors for adolescent anhedonia in the presence of demographic and clinical factors. J Mood Anxiety Disord. 2025 Mar 10;10:100116.
  2. Seah THS, Eckstrand KL, Gupta T, Marshal MP, Forbes EE. Understanding suicide in sexual minority youth: Neural reactivity to social cues as a moderating influence. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2025 Apr 23.
  3. Gupta T, Eckstrand KL, Lenniger CJ, Haas GL, Silk JS, Ryan ND, Phillips ML, Flores LE Jr, Pizzagalli DA, Forbes EE. Anhedonia in adolescents at transdiagnostic familial risk for severe mental illness: Clustering by symptoms and mechanisms of association with behavior. J Affect Disord. 2024 Feb 15;347:249-261.
  4. Gupta T, Karim HT, Jones NP, Ferrarelli F, Nance M, Taylor SF, Rogers D, Pogue AM, Seah THS, Phillips ML, Ryan ND, Forbes EE. Continuous theta burst stimulation to dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in young adults with depression: Changes in resting frontostriatal functional connectivity relevant to positive mood. Behav Res Ther. 2024 Mar;174:104493.
  5. Forbes EE, Dahl RE. Research review: Altered reward function in adolescent depression: What, when and how? J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2012 Jan;53(1):3-15.

Education Interests

Research mentorship; Clinical psychology intern supervision

Clinical Interests

Depression, anxiety & sleep in adolescence

Pitt Psychiatry Hosts Second Annual Interventional Psychiatry Showcase

Collage of Interventional Psychiatry Showcase

In interventional psychiatry research, investigators marry technology development with new knowledge of alterations in neural circuitry in psychiatric disorders. The 2025 Department of Psychiatry Interventional Psychiatry Showcase, attended by faculty, staff, and trainees, focused on transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS). Through lively lunchtime roundtables...

Erika Forbes, PhD, Elected to Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Scientific Council

Erika Forbes, PhD

We are pleased to announce that Erika Forbes, PhD (Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology), has been elected to the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) Scientific Council. The BBRF is the top non-governmental funder of mental health research grants. The Scientific Council reviews and selects the most promising research proposals with the greatest potential to lead to breakthroughs in mental...

Pitt Psychiatry Hosts First Interventional Psychiatry Showcase

Interventional Psychiatry Showcase Classroom Mosaic

Interventional psychiatry is a major focus for many Pitt Psychiatry clinical and research faculty members. In the clinical environment, interventional psychiatry entails the development and implementation of novel psychiatric treatments using devices and innovative pharmacology, alone or with cognitive or behavioral treatment strategies. In interventional psychiatry research, investigators marry technology...

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...