Pitt Psychiatry Establishes Center for Neural Circuit-Based Technology Interventions in Psychiatry

Faculty of the New CNCTI-P Center

The Department of Psychiatry has established a Center for Neural Circuit-Based Technology Interventions in Psychiatry (CNCTI-P), which will be led by Mary Phillips, MD, MD (CANTAB) (Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Clinical and Translational Science, and Bioengineering, and Pittsburgh Foundation-Emmerling Endowed Chair in Psychotic Disorders). Dr. Phillips is an international leader in affective neuroscience, specifically in the identification of neural correlates that underlie the symptoms of specific abnormalities in emotion processing in people with mood disorders.

Substantial advances in human brain imaging have provided unprecedented insights into the neural circuitry of individuals with a range of different psychiatric disorders.

The goal of the CNCTI-P is to use our growing understanding of the neural circuit-level abnormalities and associated biological mechanisms underlying major psychiatric disorders to facilitate the development of pathophysiologically guided, new technology-based, targeted treatments that will advance the precision medicine approach in psychiatry.

In addition to Dr. Phillips, initial members of the new Center will contribute expertise in the following areas:

  • Michele Bertocci, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry): Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data analysis 
  • Henry Chase, PhD (Research Assistant Professor of Psychiatry): Coding and data analytic pipeline development
  • João Paulo Lima Santos, MD (Research Instructor in Psychiatry): Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI ) data analysis and dMRI data preprocessing
  • Brian Coffman, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry): Electroencephalogram (EEG), event-related potential (ERP), and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)
  • Fabio Ferrarelli MD, PhD (Associate Professor of Psychiatry): EEG and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
  • Rajesh Narendran, MD (Professor of Radiology): Positron emission tomography (PET) 
  • Deepak Sarpal, MD (Associate Professor of Psychiatry): Neuromelanin imaging
  • Amelia Versace, MD (Associate Professor of Psychiatry): dMRI data analysis and methods development