Leanne Williams, Ph.D.: August 8th, 2017
"Neuroscience Informed Precision Psychiatry”

William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Lecture
Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital Conference Center
11:00am - 11:45 am    Registration and Lunch, lunch stops being served at 11:45 - no exceptions
12:00pm - 1:00pm     Program

Dr. Williams is changing the way we understand and treat mental disorders. She is developing a model for Neuroscience Informed Precision Mental Health for understanding mental disorders as disruptions in brain circuits that govern emotional and cognitive functions. The goal is to use this model to accelerate the  translation of neuroscience insights into better diagnosis and treatment choices that are tailored to each person. After first graduating, Dr. Williams worked with patients experiencing serious mental disorders and who had been hospitalized for many years. This experience transformed the trajectory of her career. She went on to complete her PhD in 1996 with a British Council scholarship for study at Oxford University.
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Dr. Williams develops Neuroscience Informed Precision Mental Health as a Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and as Director of her interdisciplinary lab, the “PanLab”.  She also leads department-wide initiatives in Precision Psychiatry as Associate Chair of Research Strategy and as the Chair of the major labs focused on clinical translational neuroscience. She has a joint position at the Palo Alto VA where she is Director of education and dissemination, focused on traumatic stress. 
Dr. Williams first came to Stanford as a visiting Professor in 2011. At that time she was leading a multi-site international study to identify brain biomarkers for depression and antidepressant response.  She was thrilled to join the Stanford faculty in 2013. Prior to this time she was foundation Professor of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry at the Sydney Medical School and Director of the interdisciplinary Sydney Brain Dynamics Center for 12 years. Her scholarly contributions to the field include over 250 peer-reviewed publications. 

Learning points:
An introduction to key principles for one approach to developing a neuroscience-informed psychiatry model

1. Learn about brain imaging findings that may inform treatment decisions for depression
2. Learn about genetic and environmental predictors of treatment outcomes for depression
   
   

REGISTER TO ATTEND!
 To register, email:  Lauren Haguewood at lehaguewood@saintfrancis.com                           

Tor D. Wager, Ph.D.: June 6th, 2017
"Reproducible, Generalizable Brain Models of Affective Processes”

William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Lecture
Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital Conference Center
11:00am - 11:45 am    Registration and Lunch, lunch stops being served at 11:45 - no exceptions
12:00pm - 1:00pm     Program

Dr. Wager is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and a faculty member in the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his
Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in cognitive psychology in 2003, and served as an Assistant and Associate Professor at Columbia University from 2004-2009. Since
2010, he has directed Boulder’s Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience laboratory. He has a deep interest in how thinking influences affective experiences, affective learning,
and brain-body communication. His laboratory also focuses on the development and deployment of analytic methods, and has developed several publically available
software toolboxes for fMRI analysis.
 
Learning points:
 
1. Understand how pain and emotions are represented in the brain.
2. Examine the role of scientific transparency and reproducibility in modern brain scanning experiments.
3. Differentiate between pain and emotional networks in the brain.
 
REGISTER TO ATTEND!
 
To register, email:  Lauren Haguewood at lehaguewood@saintfrancis.com

​Each hemisphere of the brain performs special functions that allows the brain as a whole to work more efficiently.  How do these two halves work as a whole? What are patterns of right brain and left brain functions?  How did these functions evolve through time and within individuals?  What relevance does handedness have on mental illness?  In this talk, we will explore lateralization of human brain function and how the balancing of specialized components makes a healthy whole.

Dr. Yoon-Hee Cha is a neurologist who earned her medical degree from Mayo Medical School. While at the University of California-Los Angeles, she developed an interest in using functional MRI, EEG, and neuromodulation techniques to study and treat disorders of motion perception.  She joined LIBR in August 2012.  Her current work focuses on a group of patients with mal de debarquement syndrome (MdDS) as well as disorders of spatial processing related to anxiety and migraine. 

 John H. Krystal, M.D.
"Glutamate Synaptic Dysfunction in Schizophrenia:  Microcircuits, Macrocircuits, and Novel Therapeutics”
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Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital Conference Center
9:00am - 9:45 am    Registration and Breakfast, breakfast stops being served at 9:45 - no exceptions
10:00am - 11:00am     Program

Dr. Krystal is the Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Professor of Translational Research, Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, and Professor of Neuroscience at the Yale University School of Medicine and Chief of Psychiatry at Yale-New Haven Hospital.  He is a graduate of the University of Chicago, Yale University School of Medicine, and the Yale Psychiatry Residency Training Program.  He has published extensively on the neurobiology and treatment of schizophrenia, alcoholism, PTSD, and depression. Notably, he led the discovery of the rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine in humans. He is the Director of the NIAAA Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcoholism and the Clinical Neuroscience Division of the VA National Center for PTSD. Dr. Krystal is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine. Currently, he is president of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP), a member of the NIMH National Mental Health Advisory Council, and editor of Biological Psychiatry (IF=11.212).

Learning points:
 
1. To introduce glutamate synaptic dysfunction in schizophrenia
2. To describe evidence for disinhibited/hyperconnected and atrophic phases of schizophrenia
3. To consider the implications of these pathophysiologic hypotheses for glutarnatergic pharmacotherapies for schizophrenia

REGISTER TO ATTEND!
 
To register, email:  Lauren Haguewood at lehaguewood@saintfrancis.com

​The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study is the largest (with a planned enrollment of 11,000 individuals ages 9-10) longitudinal study of its kind ever conducted.  The recruitment for this 23-site study started in September of 2016; so far approximately 1400 participants age 9-10 have been enrolled in the study.  The Coordinating Site has released some initial data to the participating sites for preliminary analyses.  LIBR will present some very basic characterization of the participants in comparison to the other ABCD sites.  The presentation will have a particular emphasis on gaming and internet activities.  This will include a review of what is known about the influence of gaming on the brain and brain development.  We also welcome questions from the audience during and after the presentation.

"Immune Activation in Psychiatric Disorders”

William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Lecture
Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital Conference Center
11:00am - 11:45 pm    Registration and Lunch, lunch stops being served at 11:45 - no exceptions
12:00pm - 1:00 pm     Program

Dr. Yolken is the Theodore and Vada Stanley Distinguished Professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.  He chairs the Stanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology, the nation's first pediatric research center designed to investigate links between early childhood infections and severe mental illness including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and autism.  His research group is investigating whether these disorders can be associated with prior exposure to viral triggers such as herpesviruses and influenza viruses as well as eukaryotic organisms such as Candida albicans and the Toxoplasms gondii.  Their research indicates that antimicrobial and anti-flammatory medications have the potential to treat or prevent serious psychiatric disorders in some individuals.

Dr. Yolken attended Harvard College and Harvard Medical School and received post-doctoral training at Cornell University and the National Institutes of Health.  He has over 480 published peer-reviewed articles and numerous book chapters and presentations at scientific meetings.
 
Learning points:
 
1. Understand immune activation in psychiatric disorders
2. Recognize risk factors
3. Recognize opportunities for intervention
 
REGISTER TO ATTEND!
 
To register, email:  Lauren Haguewood at lehaguewood@saintfrancis.com

​Florence Breslin will present an overview of adolescent drug and alcohol use and abuse around the country and here in Oklahoma. The key themes of the talk are: (a) the real statistics of use to reduce the “not my child” ideology, (b) the effects of use on the developing brain, and (c) how to talk to your child about why to avoid drugs and alcohol.
 
Ms. Breslin is the Child and Adolescent Clinical Assessment Manager at LIBR.  She studied biology and genetics at Niagara University and obtained her Masters in biology and addiction at the University of Virginia.  Ms. Breslin is a Certified Clinical Research Professional with publications in genetics, pre-clinical addiction and neuroimaging.  In January of 2015, Ms. Breslin joined LIBR as the study coordinator for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a landmark nation-wide study of adolescent brain development funded by the National Institutes of Health. 

Celebrate Brain Awareness Week! Join the OSU Center for Health Sciences this Friday, March 10th from 10-12pm to learn about physical activity, healthy living and brain function, understanding and responding to dementia-related behavior and dancing for a healthy brain.

Light refreshments and cookies will be served. The event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP to Darin Tyson at darin.tyson@okstate.edu. We'll see you there!

"Targeting the Prefrontal Cortex and Cognition for Intervention in Addiction”

William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Lecture
Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital Conference Center
11:00am - 11:45 pm    Registration and Lunch
12:00pm - 1:00 pm     Program

Dr. Goldstein is a Professor of Psychiatry with a secondary appointment in the Department of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) in NY. Dr. Goldstein is chief of the Brain Imaging Center (BIC) at ISMMS; she also directs the NARC (Neuropsychoimaging of Addiction and Related Conditions) research group that uses multimodality functional neuroimaging methods to explore the neurobiological basis of impaired cognitive and emotional functioning in human drug addiction and other disorders of self-control. An important application of this research is to facilitate the development of intervention modalities that would improve treatment outcome in drug addiction and other chronically relapsing disorders of self-regulation. Nationally and internationally known for her neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies in drug addiction, Dr. Goldstein formulated a theoretical model known as Impaired Response Inhibition and Salience Attribution (iRISA). The model uses multiple neuroimaging modalities—including MRI, EEG/ERP, PET—and neuropsychological tests to explore the neurobiological underpinnings of iRISA in drug addiction and related conditions. Dr. Goldstein became fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) in January 2015, receiving the prestigious Joel Elkes Research Award in 2012 and the Jacob P. Waletzky Award in 2013.
 
Learning points:
 
1. Identify the core neuropsychological mechanisms (response inhibition, salience attribution, and self-awareness/insight into illness) underlying the clinical symptomatology of drug addiction
2. Recognize the contribution of compromises in brain function and structure to human cocaine addiction
3. Is there recovery of brain function and structure in addiction?
 
For Physicians: CME credit will be given.

For Psychologists: The Oklahoma State Board of Examiners of Psychologists, the American Psychological Association and the Oklahoma Psychological Association recognizes AMA PRA Category 1 credit™.  

For Social Workers: This event has been approved by the Oklahoma State Board of Licensed Social Workers for 1 hour Category 1Clinical.  (CEP Number - 20150007)

For LPCs and LMFTs: An application has been made to the State Board of Behavioral Health Licensure (BBHL) for 1 hour of CE.

For CADCs and LADCs: Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital, Tulsa, Oklahoma, is accredited as a provider of continuing chemical dependency education by the State of Oklahoma - Board of Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselors for 1 hour of CE.                                     

 
REGISTER TO ATTEND!
Email:  Lauren Haguewood at lehaguewood@saintfrancis.com

​Dr. Amanda Morris will present an overview of how parents, caregivers, and educators influence children’s emotion regulation in the brain. The key themes that will be discussed are: (a) how adults’ influence emotion regulation across development, in infancy, childhood and adolescence, (b) positive techniques for responding to children’s emotional displays, (c) behaviors to avoid when interacting with children when they are emotional, and (c) how adults’ responses to children’s emotions impact later development and mental health.
 
Dr. Morris is a developmental scientist and the George Kaiser Family Foundation Chair in Child Development at Oklahoma State University. She studied psychology at Temple University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in developmental psychology at Arizona State University. In October of 2015, Dr. Morris joined LIBR as a co-investigator for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a landmark nation-wide study of adolescent brain development funded by the National Institutes of Health. She is also part of Tulsa’s Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity (CIRCA) and is conducting a study of parent-adolescent inter-brain activity.   

William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Lecture
Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital Conference Center
Tuesday, February 14, 2017

11:00am - 11:45 pm    Registration and Lunch (Please register and arrive by 11:45 for lunch)
12:00pm - 1:00 pm      Program
 
“Intergenerational Risk: Direct and Indirect Effects of Parental Adverse Childhood Experience on Child Biobehavioral Regulation”
 
Jennifer Hays-Grudo, PhD, is a Regents professor of Human Development and Family Science and an adjunct professor of Pediatrics at Oklahoma State University. Prior to joining OSU in July of 2013, she was a George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) Chair in Community Medicine at OU-Tulsa. Since 2008, Dr. Hays-Grudo has been involved with the Tulsa Children’s Project, a GKFF-funded collaboration between OU-Tulsa, Harvard’s Center for the Developing Child, Tulsa Educare, and other community partners in designing and implementing a highly integrated set of interventions to reduce the effects of intergenerational poverty and adversity on young children. Before coming to Oklahoma, she was on the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where she led the Office of Health Promotion, held numerous NIH grants on health behavior in high-risk populations and was the principal investigator of the Baylor’s clinical center for the Women’s Health Initiative. Dr. Hays-Grudo is currently the Principal Investigator and Project Director of the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity (CIRCA), an $11.3M, five-year NIH grant that builds capacity for federally-funded research addressing the immediate and long-term effects of trauma and poverty on children’s health and development.
 
Learning points:

1. Know the current research findings on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s).
2. Understand potential mechanisms of intergenerational transmissions of ACE’s.
3. Be familiar with novel approaches to treat effects of childhood trauma.

 
REGISTER TO ATTEND!
 
To register, email:  Lauren Haguewood at lehaguewood@saintfrancis.com

​Our society has a long philosophical and cultural history of separating the body and the mind.  Recent advances in neuroscience have demonstrated that precisely the opposite is true. Cognitive and emotional wellbeing are greatly influenced by a complex interplay among the body’s neural, endocrine, metabolic, and immune systems.  This has important personal and public health implications.  In this lecture, Dr. Simmons will provide an overview of evidence for the links between physical and mental health, with particular attention paid to child and adolescent development.  Key themes will include: (a) how physical activity improves brain health, thereby affecting cognition and emotional wellbeing; (b) how a healthy diet affects brain and body function, and (c) the critical importance of sleep in brain development.

Dr. W. Kyle Simmons completed his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at Emory University, and his postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health. Currently, Dr. Simmons is a tenured Associate Professor at The University of Tulsa and Principal Investigator and Director of the Appetitive and Interoceptive Psychopathology Lab at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa.

William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Conference

Where: Laureate Conference Center, 6655 South Yale Ave, Tulsa, OK 74136
When: Tuesday, January 10th, 2017

11:00am - 11:45 pm    Registration and Lunch
12:00pm - 1:00 pm      Program
 
“Your Brain on Stress! From Molecules, Neural Circuits to Stress-related Diseases”
 
Dr. Rajita Sinha, is the Foundations Fund Endowed Professor in Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Yale University School of Medicine. She is also the Chief of the Psychology Section and Co-Director of Education for the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (home of Yale’s CTSA). Her Ph.D. was in Biological Psychology and she then retrained in Clinical Psychology and is a licensed Clinical Psychologist with expertise in mood, anxiety and addictive disorders. Dr. Sinha has previously served as the Director of Addiction Services at the Connecticut Mental Health Center and is the founding director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Stress Center that focuses on neuroscience mechanisms of stress, reward and self-control that promote addiction and chronic disease risk, and development of novel therapeutic approaches to address these mechanisms. She is internationally known for her pioneering research on the mechanisms linking stress biology to compulsive seeking, addiction relapse and recovery from addiction. She has also elucidated sex differences in stress biology that affects addiction risk, relapse and recovery. Her research has been supported by a series of NIH funded research projects for over 20 years and she has published over 250 scientific peer reviewed publications in these areas. Dr. Sinha currently serves on the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s Advisory Council and also on the NIH Common Fund supported Science of Behavior Change Program’s Expert Scientific Panel.
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Learning points:
1. Identify the neural responses to stress and it’s connection to resilient and maladaptive coping behaviors.
2. Learn about the glucocorticoid role in motivated behaviors such as alcohol, nicotine and palatable food consumption.
3. Identify at least one therapeutic approach to promote resilience and improve stress-coping.​
 
To register, email:  Lauren Haguewood at lehaguewood@saintfrancis.com

Dr. Paulus and colleagues have published a new book chapter titled "Call for Pragmatic Computational Psychiatry: Integrating Computational Approaches and Risk-Prediction Models and Disposing of Causality" in "Computational Psychiatry: New Perspectives on Mental Illness.

"Biological psychiatry is at an impasse. Despite several decades of intense research, few if any, biological parameters have contributed to a signifi cant improvement in the life of a psychiatric patient. It is argued that this impasse may be a consequence of an obsessive focus on mechanisms. Alternatively, a risk-prediction framework provides a more pragmatic approach, because it aims to develop tests and measures which generate clinically useful information. Computational approaches may have an important role to play here. This chapter presents an example of a risk-prediction framework, which shows that computational approaches provide a signifi cant predictive advantage. Future directions and challenges are highlighted."

Computational Psychiatry: New Perspectives on Mental Illness
Over the next 3 years, 50% of the chapters will be posted on a monthly rotational basis. Take a look by following the above link to the MIT Press website and “Look Inside the Book.” 

Ernst Strüngmann Forum Reports
Additional books published by MIT Press
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Full citation:
Paulus MPP, Huang C, Harle KM. 2016. Call for Pragmatic Computational Psychiatry: Integrating Computational Approaches and Risk-Prediction Models and Disposing of Causality. In: Computational Psychiatry: New Perspectives on Mental Illness, edited by A. D. Redish and J. A. Gordon.  Strüngmann Forum Reports, vol. 20, J. Lupp, series editor. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Conference

NEW LOCATION THIS MONTH:  OU-Tulsa Schusterman Learning Center, Perkins Auditorium, Friday, December 16, 2016

11:00am - 11:45 pm    Registration and Lunch
12:00pm - 1:00 pm      Program
 
“Methodological advances in real-time fMRI for high-speed, high-resolution neurofeedback and brain-computer interface applications”
 
Prof. Dr. Rainer Goebel studied psychology and computer science in Marburg, Germany (1983-1988) and completed his PhD in 1994 (Braunschweig, Germany). In 1993 he received the Heinz Maier Leibnitz Advancement award in cognitive science sponsored by the German minister of science and education for a publication on the binding problem and in 1994 he received the Heinz Billing award from the Max Planck society for developing a software package for the creation and simulation of neural network models. From 1995-1999 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt/Main where he founded the functional neuroimaging group. In 1997/1998 he was a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced studies (“Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin”). Since January 2000, he is a full professor for Cognitive Neuroscience at Maastricht University. He is also founding director of the Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre (M-BIC) and the driving force of the recently established ultra-high field imaging center housing 3, 7 and 9.4 Tesla human MRI scanners. He was a member of the board of govenors of the F.C. Donders Centre in Nijmegen (2001-2008) and since 2008 he is team leader of the “Modeling and Neuroimaging” group at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam. He has served as chair of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (2006-2008) and also received funding for basic and translational neuroscience research including a prestigious Advanced Investigators Grant from the European Research Council (2011 - 2016) and a competitive grant from the Human Brain Project. He is involved mainly in SP2 of the HBP project and heads the Co-Design Project 4 (CDP4) on visuo-motor integration. He is also founder of the company “Brain Innovation BV” that produces free and commercial software for neuroimaging data analysis and clinical applications. In 2014, he was selected as member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. 
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Learning points:
1. Knowledge about recent methodological advances in real-time fMRI
2. Possibilities of fMRI Brain-Computer Interfaces at 7 Tesla scanners
3. Overview of MREG technique for 10Hz BOLD sampling 
 
To register, email:  Lauren Haguewood at lehaguewood@saintfrancis.com

The brain and the immune system interact in a complex manner. This lecture will provide an overview of this relationship and explain how immune function affects mood, and how depression in turn, may affect immune function. The potential for using immune-modifying medications to treat depression will also be discussed.
 
Dr. Savitz completed an undergraduate degree (B.S.) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and earned his PhD in psychiatric genetics at the University of Cape Town. Subsequently, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD before moving to Tulsa in November 2009 to take a faculty position at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research.