William K. Warren Jr. "Frontiers in Neuroscience" Conference Series
June 9, 2021

Speaker: Stephen T. Higgins, PhD
Topic: "Contingency Management in the Treatment of Substance Use Disorders and Other Health Conditions"
Location: Virtual Presentation via Zoom 
​Time: 12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m. CST

Welcome from the Director

Martin P. Paulus, M.D.
Statement from the Scientific Director and President

Unquestionably, this has been a difficult year in many respects.  The impact of COVID-19 has been profound on staff, research participants and operations. We made the decision to close the Institute to in-person data collection between late March and middle of May.  Since that time, we have begun to re-establish our experiments and have been quite successful in following up with our participants for our ongoing studies. 

Despite these challenges, LIBR’s scientific productivity has been outstanding.  LIBR investigators and affiliated investigators published 107 scientific manuscripts in 2020, which is a 180% increase from 58 publications in 2019.  Moreover, the principal investigators and associate investigators have applied for 15 major extramural grants, another doubling of effort compared to 2019.  Most notably, Dr. Robin Aupperle received her first R01 grant notice of award in the Summer of this year.  In addition, we are awaiting the notice of award for Dr. Jennifer Stewart for her R01.  What is important, however, is that all of the investigators have been competitive and persistent in applying for extramural funds. 

​The ultimate goal remains for the team at LIBR to use neuroscience-based approaches to develop better tools for the assessment, prognosis, and diagnosis of mental health conditions and to improve treatments for these illnesses.
A Message from Dr. Martin Paulus on Racism and Science: A Call for Action
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.

Meet the Investigators

Robin Aupperle, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator, LIBR
Associate Professor, University of Tulsa
Volunteer Faculty Member, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oklahoma

Dr. Aupperle’s research focuses on using neurocognitive methods to enhance our understanding of anxiety, depression, and trauma. She is particularly interested in:
 
(1) The intersect between cognitive and emotional processing and how this may relate to the development and maintenance of anxiety, depression, and trauma-related symptoms.
 
(2) How knowledge from neuroscientific research may be used to enhance treatment and prevention efforts. 
 
In regards to the former, she has conducted research related to neuropsychological correlates of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and has developed translational exploratory and decision-making tasks to better understand behavioral, physiological, and neural correlates of anxiety and depression. In regards to the latter, she has been involved in research investigating behavioral and neural mechanisms of current pharmacologic and behavioral treatments for anxiety, depression, and trauma-related disorders. She is also actively involved in identifying factors that support resilience to college-related stress and strategies to optimize psychological well-being for students.  

Research Program Highlights

Main Question
What are the behavioral or brain-based characteristics that best predict long-term outcomes and help to identify who will respond to what type of intervention? 

Future Directions
​To develop individually tailored anxiety, depression, and trauma interventions or prevention strategies that help patients to have better outcomes.
​
​Approach
We use a multi-level approach, i.e. test patients behaviorally, physiologically, and during fMRI, to develop individual-based profiles that will help to personalize therapy treatments and develop novel behavioral interventions and prevention programs.

What's New & Noteworthy

The welfare of our LIBR team and all of our study participants is our utmost concern. Therefore, we have implemented the following policies as we re-open our doors to the public:

• In-person studies have resumed at our facility as of July 1st.
• On-site participants will be required to complete a free COVID-19 test (nasal swab). A negative result will allow continued participation.
• All participants will receive a mask to wear
• LIBR staff will be wearing masks

We have ongoing and new studies that are available for both remote and in-person participation. To join, please contact us at 918-502-5100, email info@libr.net or sign-up online: http://www.laureateinstitute.org/libr-sign-up.html

We are continuing to conduct research that helps us to develop better diagnoses, prognoses, and treatments for people with mental health disorders and we are grateful that you continue to participate in this important work.
​

The William K. Warren Foundation

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.