CSR&D Research Career Development Transition Award Application

20%的平民和高达50%的退伍军人报告说感到孤独或孤独 与世隔绝。这在临床上很重要，因为孤独和社交孤立是预测 更糟糕的身体健康和过早的死亡率。精神疾病与这种流行病密切相关，因为它 孤独感和社会孤立感都是导致和恶化的原因。正是精神疾病的社会缺陷 最严重的是导致孤独和社会孤立。这些社会缺陷包括难以理解 其他人在社交场合的行为举止和举止困难。尽管它们很重要， 这些社交缺陷在神经和行为层面上知之甚少，也很难量化。 此外，针对他们的现有治疗方法还不充分。我是联合和调谐的主管 神经精神障碍(BAND)实验室，由一名初级教员组成，由CSR&D提供支持 职业发展奖，包括博士和博士在内的博士后研究员5人，研究生4人，有偿6人 研究助理，20多名志愿者。我们相信心理健康和幸福的关键是从 牢固的人际关系。我们的使命是开发新的药理和认知干预措施 精神疾病，使患者能够加强与其他人和世界的联系。我们的 工作主要集中在了解心理、行为、生理和神经影响 神经肽催产素在多种精神疾病中的应用。例如，我们有 进行了大量研究，确定了催产素对患有 精神分裂症。这项工作的一个亮点是，我们发现对个体单独使用催产素 精神分裂症患者在高级社会认知过程中的神经活动正常化 正常化与行为表现的改善有关。这项工作导致了VA CSR&D的功绩 获奖进行重复使用催产素治疗精神分裂症的最大规模随机临床试验 约会。我们还进行了一些研究，研究催产素作为一种潜在的治疗方法来治疗患有 酒精、阿片类药物和兴奋剂使用障碍以及共同发生的创伤后应激障碍(PTSD)和 酒精使用障碍(一种常见且难以治疗的共病)。我们最近还完成了一项大型 以实验室为基础的健康个体研究，以确定急性给予催产素是否可以 加快发展团队凝聚力。这项工作使我们假设药理学上 影响社交过程的治疗可以与心理社会治疗相结合，以可能 取得协同作用的积极成果。为了研究这种可能性，我们进行了配对研究 服用各种具有社会影响的药物，包括催产素、3，4-亚甲二氧基甲基苯丙胺 (MDMA)和裸盖菇素，以及各种心理治疗干预措施，包括基于群体的心理治疗。在……里面 在非药物领域，我们一直在调查通过一种 智能手机应用程序作为治疗创伤后应激障碍的方法。我们的研究采用了多种分析方法，包括 社会行为的客观测量，如眼神凝视、面部表情、团队凝聚力和表现， 社会认知能力的量化、神经成像方法、基于实验室的渴求诱导 范式，以及心理生理变化和人际同步性的量化。总而言之，我有 开发了一个广泛而高效的跨诊断研究计划，并组装了一个大型、 精力充沛的多学科研究小组专注于开发和测试新的治疗方法 很难治疗贯穿大多数精神障碍的社会缺陷。通过改善整个社会的赤字 障碍，退伍军人将有更好的社会功能，症状严重程度降低，并将能够 更有效地动员他们的社会支持网络，并从事其他精神治疗。这将导致 为退伍军人健康系统提供更好的健康结果和降低成本。

There is an “epidemic of loneliness” with 20% of civilians and up to 50% of veterans reporting feeling lonely or socially isolated. This is clinically important because loneliness and social isolation are strong predictors of worse physical health and early mortality. Mental illness is intimately entwined with this epidemic because it both causes and is worsened by loneliness and social isolation. It is the social deficits of mental illness that most strongly contribute to loneliness and social isolation. These social deficits include difficulty understanding other people’s behavior and difficulty behaving appropriately in social situations. Despite their importance, these social deficits are poorly understood at the neural and behavioral levels and are difficult to quantify. Moreover, available treatments for them are inadequate. I am the Director of the Bonding and Attunement in Neuropsychiatric Disorders (BAND) lab, which comprises one junior faculty member supported by a CSR&D Career Development Award, 5 postdoctoral fellows including MDs and PhDs, 4 graduate students, 6 paid research assistants, over 20 volunteers. We believe the key to mental health and well-being starts with strong relationships. Our mission is to develop novel pharmacological and cognitive interventions for mental illness that enable patients to strengthen their connections to other people and the world. Our work has primarily focused on understanding the psychological, behavioral, physiological, and neural effects of administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin across multiple psychiatric illnesses. For example, we have conducted numerous studies determining the acute effects of oxytocin administration in individuals with schizophrenia. One highlight of this work is that we found that a single administration of oxytocin to individuals with schizophrenia normalized neural activity during high-level social cognitive processing and that this normalization was associated with improved behavioral performance. This work led to a VA CSR&D Merit Award to conduct the largest randomized clinical trial of repeated administration of oxytocin in schizophrenia to date. We have also conducted studies investigating oxytocin as a potential treatment for individuals with alcohol, opioid, and stimulant use disorders, and co-occurring post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (a common and difficult-to-treat comorbidity). We also recently completed a large laboratory-based study in healthy individuals to determine whether acute oxytocin administration can accelerate the development of team cohesion. This work led us to hypothesize that pharmacological treatments that affect social processes could be paired with psychosocial treatments to possibly achieve synergistically positive outcomes. To investigate this possibility, we have conducted studies pairing administration of various drugs with social effects, including oxytocin, 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), and psilocybin, with various psychotherapy interventions including group-based psychotherapy. In the non-pharmacological arena, we have been investigating attention bias modification delivered through a smartphone app as a treatment for PTSD. Our studies incorporate multiple analytic approaches including objective measures of social behavior such as eye-gaze, facial expressivity, team cohesion and performance, quantification of social cognitive abilities, neuroimaging approaches, laboratory-based craving induction paradigms, and quantification of psychophysiological changes and interpersonal synchrony. In sum, I have developed a broad and highly productive trans-diagnostic program of research and assembled a large, energetic, and multidisciplinary research group focused on developing and testing novel treatments for the difficult to treat social deficits that cut across most psychiatric disorders. By improving social deficits across disorders, veterans will have better social functioning and decreased symptom severity and will be able to more effectively mobilize their social support networks and engage in other psychiatric treatment. This will lead to better health outcomes and decreased costs for the VA health system.