Dr. Guido Frank - January 11, 2023 

"Why Does My Child Not Eat? The Complex Relationships Between Behavior and Neurobiology in Eating Disorders"

William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Lecture 
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm     Program in the LPCH auditorium  (No registration needed)
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Dr. Frank is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego and a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist. He earned his medical degree from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. He trained in psychosomatics at the Center for Behavioral Health Klinik Roseneck, Prien, Germany, and then at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh, and the University of California San Diego, USA. Dr. Frank is a clinician-researcher who has studied the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders for the past 25 years. He is also a trained psychotherapist and applies neurobiological knowledge to inform psychotherapeutic treatment. In addition, he is an expert consultant to local and national law firms. He has received multiple awards for mentoring, research, and teaching. Dr. Frank has been funded through the National Institute of Mental Health and numerous private foundation grants for the past fifteen years to study the biological domains that underlie eating disorder-related behaviors in youth and adults. His research has introduced computational modeling to the eating disorders field. His overarching goal is to develop translational models that bridge clinical presentation with neuroscience to develop more effective treatments.

Learning objectives: 

1. Explain how fear can trigger the food intake control circuitry in eating disorders.
2. Discuss how motivational reward circuits can be studied in eating disorders using functional brain imaging.
3. Discuss how anxious traits and eating disorder brain neurobiology interact.
   
   

For Physicians: Saint Francis Health System is accredited by the Oklahoma State Medical Association to sponsor continuing medical education for physicians.
Saint Francis Health System designates this live activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™.  Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
 
For Psychologists: The Oklahoma State Board of Examiners of Psychologists, the American Psychological Association and the Oklahoma Psychological Association recognize AMA PRA Category 1  credit™. Saint Francis Health System is accredited by the OSMA
 
For Social Workers: Saint Francis Health System is an approved provider of continuing education for social worker through the Oklahoma State Board of Licensed Social Workers for 1 hour Category 1 Clinical. (CEP Number - 20230007)
 
For CADCs and LADCs Saint Francis Health System is accredited as a provider of continuing education programs for CADCs and LADCs through the Oklahoma Board of Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselors.      (1 hour)
 
The LPC/LMFT This event as been approved by the State Board of Behavioral Health Licensure (BBHL) for 1 hour of CE.  
 
For questions , email:  Lauren Haguewood at lehaguewood@saintfrancis.com

Dr. Karl-Juergen Baer - November 1, 2022 

"Central Mechanisms of the Autonomic System in Health and Disease"
William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Lecture 

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm     Program in the LPCH auditorium
11:00am - 11:45am      Lunch will be served beforehand in the LPCH banquet room

Dr. Karl-Juergen Baer is the Chief of Psychosomatic Medicine of the Universitaetsklinikum Jena in Jena, Germany.  He is a psychiatrist and clinical scientist with over 200 publications in the area of neuroimaging, neurophysiology, and pathophysiology of prevalent conditions affecting mental health including mood disorders, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and pain syndromes.

Learning objectives: 

1. Understand the current conceptualization of the organization of the autonomic hierarchy.
2. Understand current study methods of central and peripheral autonomic structures.
3. Become familiar with autonomic dysfunction in prevalent mental health disorders.​

Karen Quigley, Ph.D. - Sept 7, 2022 

"Why It Matters That A Brain Is In A Body"

William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Lecture 
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm    LPCH Auditorium 

Dr. Karen Quigley is Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University where she directs the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory. She is an affective scientist and biological psychologist whose basic science work examines the psychophysiological, behavioral and contextual features of affective experiences like emotion and stress.  She also studies how interoception (i.e., sensory signaling from the organs of the body and use of this sense data by the brain) impacts affective experience and behavior. More broadly, her work focuses on how the body and brain together create experience and behavior. Her recent work focuses on understanding the sources of observed variation in patterns of physiological features that occur during different instances of the same emotional experience, such as when a person feels anger or fear. Contrary to common assumptions, the variation is quite large in the observed biological patterns of activity in the body and brain, even for emotional instances labeled with the same emotion word. So, the biological pattern associated with anger during one emotional instance in one person can be quite different from the pattern observed in the same person within a different context or the pattern observed in another person. This suggests that studies of emotion need to go beyond the laboratory and sample a much broader range of emotional instances in everyday life. To enable this work, Dr. Quigley innovated a new biologically-triggered experience sampling methodology that enhances the efficiency of sampling multimodal data, including self-reports, physiology, behavior, and context, which can be used in data-driven models to better understand what features of a person or the context serve to structure the variation. In her applied research, Dr. Quigley assesses affective experience and health outcomes in those experiencing negative functional impacts after major life events like a military deployment or in community members who have experienced a local terrorism event. In other applied work, she uses health technology, including a person’s own physiological data, to motivate a patient to make behavior changes with the goal of improving sleep, physical activity, and pain. Dr. Quigley is a former president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, and an inaugural Fellow of the Society for Psychophysiological Research. She is a former Associate Editor for Psychophysiology, where she is currently a consulting editor. She also serves on the editorial boards of Affective Science and Biological Psychology.
 
 Learning objectives:  

1. To understand the role of predictive regulation (allostasis) in the service of optimizing energetic resource utilization.
2. To understand how allostasis and interoception together support affective experience and action.
3. To understand how new methodological tools for biologically-triggered experience sampling can help us better study real-world experience.

LIBR Principal Investigators, Dr. Chun Chieh Fan, M.D., Ph.D. and Wesley Thompson, Ph.D., have co-authored a new paper in JAMA Neurology with collaborators from UCSD, UCSD School of Medicine, UCSF, University of Oslo and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reporting that individuals with two copies of the hemochromatosis risk gene mutation (one inherited from each parent) show substantial evidence iron buildup in regions of the brain responsible for movement, which may be a risk factor for developing movement disorders, such as Parkinson's Disease. 

Key Points
Question: "To what extent does genetic risk for hemochromatosis affect the brain and contribute to risk for neurological disorders?"

Finding: "In this cross-sectional study that included 836 participants, we found that individuals at high genetic risk for developing hemochromatosis had magnetic resonance imaging scans indicating substantial iron deposition localized to motor circuits of the brain. Further analysis of data for 488 288 individuals revealed that male individuals with high genetic risk for hemochromatosis (but not female individuals) were at 1.80-fold increased risk for developing a movement disorder, with the majority of these individuals not having a concurrent diagnosis for hemochromatosis."
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Meaning: "Genetic risk for hemochromatosis is associated with abnormal iron deposition in motor circuits and increased risk of movement disorders, regardless of formal diagnosis of hemochromatosis, and treatment for hemochromatosis that reduces iron overload may prove beneficial for male individuals at genetic risk for hemochromatosis who have movement disorders."
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Learn more about their groundbreaking research in the full press release from the University of California - San Diego.
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Original research article from JAMA Neurology:
Association of Genetic Variant Linked to Hemochromatosis with Brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging Measures of Iron and Movement Disorders

The shooting event yesterday on the Saint Francis Hospital campus has many of us shaken, given an already unsettling state of mind following last week’s event in Uvalde, TX.  Each person will begin to process these traumatic events based on their own history, thoughts and beliefs.
 
Here are a couple of things to consider:
 
First, we experience these events both as an individual and as part of a community.  We may be emotionally affected by a sense of loss of safety and control, and an increase in uncertainty.
 
Second, those who are closest to the traumatic event will likely be the most affected by complex post-traumatic responses, including anxiety, depression, anger, numbness and disconnection. They will need help to regain a sense of safety and emotional stability.
 
Third, these responses develop over an extended period. Even if we are not directly exposed, we should be mindful of encountering a person months from now who may continue to experience emotional difficulties following trauma.
 
Fourth, there is evidence of various coping approaches that may result in more problems, e.g., substance and alcohol use are well-known to increase in some individuals following trauma. 
 
Fifth, processing these events within a framework of finding meaning, spirituality and benevolence may help to overcome the difficult and painful emotions many of us are feeling at this point in time.
 
-Martin Paulus, M.D.
Scientific Director and President

John Allen, Ph.D. - May 17, 2022 

"Messing With the Mind:  Altering Resting-State Brain Activity to Reduce Perseverative Thinking and Target Mental Disorders"

William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Lecture 
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm  (Virtual)

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://laureateinstitute-org.zoom.us/j/86986926864
Meeting ID: 869 8692 6864
Passcode: 732799

John JB Allen is Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience at the University of Arizona in Tucson Arizona.  After receiving his undergraduate degree under the mentorship of Loren and Jean Chapman at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, he completed his graduate training with Bill Iacono at the University of Minnesota.  Following the completion of his clinical internship at the VA medical center in Minneapolis, he assumed his current position in Arizona in 1992.
 
He has published over 180 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and been the recipient of grants from the National Institutes of Health and from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression to fund his research.  He has received numerous awards for his research, including the Distinguished Early Career Award from the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Prize, as well as numerous awards for his teaching including the Graduate College and Professional Education Teaching and Mentoring Award, and designation as University Distinguished Professor. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and a past-president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research.
 
His research interests encompass several areas, but he is interested broadly in identifying neural systems that place people at risk for emotional disorders. Using electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging, his work identifies patterns of brain activity that may underlie depression and related disorders, and that may be promising targets for intervention. Most recently, he has focused specifically on two lines of work:  1) investigating transcranial ultrasound as a neuromodulation approach to alter emotional well-being with the ultimate aim to provide a novel treatment for depression; 2) assessing the potential utility of guided psilocybin experience to alter brain network activity and improve symptoms and function in obsessive-compulsive disorder.
 
Learning objectives:  

1. To be able to describe the brain's default mode network (DMN) and its role in perseverative negative cognitive and mental disorders.        
2. To be able to describe the role of transcranial focused ultrasound as a neuromodulation approach, and its impact on DMN connectivity.
3. To summarize the impact of guided psilocybin intervention on OCD symptoms and DMN connectivity.​

Our LIBR 2021 annual report publication provides an overview of last year's happenings at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. In the report 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. We hope you enjoy the publication and look forward to continuing our goal to improve mental health through neuroscience in 2022 and beyond. ​

Tracy L. Bale, Ph.D. - April 5, 2022 

"Extracellular Vesicles as Systemic Stress Signals and Novel Mechanisms in Neurodevelopment"

William K. Warren, Jr.  Frontiers in Neuroscience Lecture 
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm     VIRTUAL LECTURE - ZOOM LINK BELOW

Tracy L. Bale is a Professor of Pharmacology and Director of the Center for Epigenetic Research in Child Health and Brain Development in the School of Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Washington in the Department of Pharmacology, and her postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute with Dr. Wylie Vale. Dr. Bale was Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania for 15 years prior to her move to UMB. Her research focuses on understanding the role of stress dysregulation in neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric diseases, and the sex differences that underlie disease vulnerability in humans and using the mouse as a model. She is interested in developing models of stress and adversity across the lifespan, including examining the effects at the germ cell level and the mechanisms involved in altering neurodevelopment. Dr. Bale’s lab also examines these mechanisms in humans, attempting to translate research findings to identify those processes and biomarkers important for promoting disease risk and resilience, especially in vulnerable populations. In her leadership role as Center Director, Dr. Bale works to engage in the Baltimore community, developing collaborations and partnerships with local organizations, health officials, social workers, and policy makers including working with the Baltimore City Council. In a translational approach, Dr. Bale’s Center brings neuroscience research and outcomes into the community. Partnering with Baltimore City schools and staff, families, and community leaders, Dr. Bale’s Center provides a lens through which policy, education and community can be viewed, focusing on the lasting and significant effects across generations of trauma, discrimination and violence. She serves on many internal and external advisory committees, panels, and boards, and has been the recipient of numerous awards for her research in this area including the Richard E. Weitzman Memorial award from the Endocrine Society, the Medtronic Award from the Society for Women’s Health Research for outstanding research that has led to the improvement of women’s health, and the Daniel H. Efron award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. She is the President of the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO), and was recently awarded Top 100 Women in Maryland 2020.    
​
Learning objectives:  

1. Understand the role of extracellular vesicles in transmission of stress         
2. Understand influences from maternal and paternal factors on neurodevelopment
3. Understand potential biomarkers associated with stress in the environment

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85192026323

Meeting ID: 851 9202 6323
Passcode: 068066