Congratulations to James Latronica, DO (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), who has been named to Pennsylvania Medical Society (PAMED)’s 2022 Top Physicians Under 40 List, which recognizes the commonwealth’s most talented early-career physicians. Dr. Latronica joined the Pitt Psychiatry faculty in 2021, having completed his family medicine residency at Clarion Hospital (Clarion, PA), followed by an addiction...

Following two years of virtual gatherings, the 2022 Society of Biological Psychiatry (SOBP) annual meeting resumed an in-person format. Pitt Psychiatry faculty and trainees gathered for a program focused on alternative and transformative frameworks for understanding psychiatric illnesses, and enhanced and newly emerging tools for measurement and manipulation. The conference additionally presented the opportunity to...

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) is a research framework that integrates multiple levels of information (from genomics and circuits to behavior and self-report) to explore basic dimensions of functioning that span the full range of human behavior. While environmental and developmental influences represent important elements of the RDoC framework, it offers little...

The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine has recognized Mary Leeman, MD (PGY2 Child Psychiatry resident), for outstanding dedication to medical education. A medical student in the Psychiatry Clerkship enthusiastically provided an account of their experience working with Dr. Leeman during their psychiatry rotation: "It goes without question that Dr. Leeman truly loves what she does. She created a positive...

It’s time to register for the Department of Psychiatry Annual Research Day, which will take place on Thursday, June 9, 2022 on the Pitt Oakland campus. This full-day event provides an excellent opportunity for attendees to meet investigators, learn more about their work, and share their expertise and interests with other members of the research community. The morning poster session will take place at Soldiers &...

We are delighted to announce that Alison Hipwell, PhD, PsyD, has been appointed Tenured Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology by the University of Pittsburgh. A nationally and internationally recognized pioneer in the study of mental health of mothers and children, Dr. Hipwell’s research focuses on transgenerational influences on postpartum psychopathology and early parenting, as well as developmental origins and...

We are pleased to announce that Alfredo Sklar, MD, PhD, has joined the faculty as Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. Dr. Sklar received his MD and PhD at the University of Florida. He completed his residency at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital in the Psychiatry Research Pathway, where he served as chief resident from 2019-2020. He then completed his postdoctoral training at Pitt in the National Institute of Mental...

Congratulations to Zach Freyberg, MD, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), who has been elected a member of The American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI)! Founded in 1908, the ASCI is one of the oldest and most esteemed nonprofit honor societies of physician-scientists. The Society is dedicated to the advancement of research that extends our understanding and improves the treatment of diseases of all...

Howard Aizenstein, MD, PhD (Charles F. Reynolds III and Ellen G. Detlefsen Endowed Chair in Geriatric Psychiatry and Professor of Bioengineering and Clinical and Translational Science), is trained as a geriatric psychiatrist and as a computer scientist, and he is recognized for his expertise in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) analysis methods and their use in clinical research in aging. In collaboration with Tamer...

Impairments in certain cognitive processes, such as working memory, are core clinical features of schizophrenia. Working memory is associated with synchronized neural oscillatory activity at gamma band frequency in the prefrontal cortex, and the power of these oscillations during the performance of cognitive tasks is lower in individuals with schizophrenia. Thus, alterations in prefrontal cortex neural circuitry...