William K. Warren Jr. "Frontiers in Neuroscience" Conference Series
Resumes Fall 2022
Speaker: TBD Topic: TBD Location: TBD Time: 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. CST |
2021 LIBR ANNUAL REPORT
Our LIBR annual scientific report provides an overview of the past year's happenings at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. In the edition below, you will find a letter from the president, Dr. Martin Paulus, information on our mission, history and specific aims, current areas of research, funding sources, events and lectures, awards, individual laboratories, selected publications and opportunities to participate in research.
Click to Download the 2021 Edition |
Welcome from the DirectorMartin P. Paulus, M.D.
Statement from the Scientific Director and President Mental health conditions continue to be among the most challenging problems human beings face. This is true even more today than only a few years ago, given the waves of SARS-CoV2 and an everchanging environment that is presenting new challenges with a changing climate. Yet, despite all these difficulties, LIBR investigators have been working tirelessly to identify processes that can become targets for intervention or biological markers of mental health conditions. LIBR aims to contribute cutting-edge neuroscience-based tools and techniques to better identify the brain processes that put individuals at risk for mental health problems, that indicate the severity of a problem or determine whether an individual has recovered from a mental health condition. Without question, our research cannot be viewed in isolation from the community we live in but rather, it must be integrated with society. I am very excited that our investigators have lived up to that challenge and have engaged with the community in a variety of different ways. My hope is that we will further extend our community reach in the coming years. 
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Meet the InvestigatorsRyan Smith, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator Laureate Institute for Brain Research Research Associate Professor The University of Tulsa Dr. Smith’s lab focuses on understanding the neurocomputational mechanisms underlying emotion-cognition interactions and how they relate to brain-body interactions, with a special focus on information-seeking behavior, prospective planning, and interoception. Lab projects also focus on how these mechanisms are affected in depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders. The primary research methods used in the lab are neuroimaging and computational modeling, including a wide range of modeling approaches (e.g., drift-diffusion models, reinforcement learning models, active inference models). A major overarching focus is to characterize information processing differences between mentally healthy and unhealthy individuals with the goal of improving diagnosis and treatment selection within psychiatry and clinical psychology. Congratulations to Dr. Smith on his $900,000 grant from the Wellbeing for Planet Earth Foundation! View the full press release here. 
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What's New & Noteworthy
Researchers at LIBR Have Identified an Abnormal Heart-Brain Connection in Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Senior author, Dr. Sahib Khalsa, and lead author, Dr. Adam Teed, have published findings with their collaborators from TU, OU, UCLA and UCSD in the February 2, 2022 edition of JAMA Psychiatry, "Association of Generalized Anxiety Disorder with Autonomic Hypersensitivity and Blunted Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Activity During Peripheral Adrenergic Stimulation". Visit our Current Events page for the full press release. 
The welfare of our LIBR team and all of our study participants is our utmost concern. Therefore, we have implemented the following policies:
• In-person studies have resumed at our facility • All participants will receive a mask to wear • LIBR staff will be wearing masks |
Racism and Science: A Call for Action from Dr. Martin Paulus
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In science, we aim to observe, experiment, and draw conclusions from the facts. We need to learn about our differences, understand how they influence our feelings, thoughts, and actions, and develop better explanations of the human conditions that we are interested in. Outrage and anger over the events on our streets, in our laboratories, and other public or private places is not enough. Instead, open engagement with respect, interest, and love will help to develop the understanding that can be used to build new systems to reduce the pain of those in the minority. Scientists are problem solvers; we need to be thinking about our contribution to finding solutions to overcoming intolerance, anger and aggression on the one hand and discover ways of healing the pain of those that have been the target of racism.
To that end, we have started a workgroup that consists of individuals who work at LIBR to enhance the recognition that race and ethnicity play an important role to improve our scientific approach to solving mental health problems. Read more here. 
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The William K. Warren Foundation
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The Laureate Institute for Brain Research opened May 1, 2009 and currently houses a multidisciplinary team of scientists and clinical research staff who apply neuroimaging, genetic, pharmacological and neuropsychological tools to investigate the biology of neuropsychiatric disorders. The Institute's creation was founded by The William K. Warren Foundation for the purpose of conducting studies aimed at developing more effective treatments or prevention strategies for these disorders. The William K. Warren Foundation continues to be the lead sponsor of LIBR research studies, which are led by scientists from diverse backgrounds, including physics, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, developmental neuroscience, computer science and genetics.
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