Network-level dynamics underlying a combined rTMS and psychotherapy treatment for major depressive disorder: An exploratory network analysis.

My research centers around the use of structural and functional imaging measures to study the shifts in network architecture in the aging brain. I am specifically interested in changes in how changes in structural and functional connectivity associated with aging impact the semantic retrieval of word or fact knowledge. Currently this involves asking why older adults have particular difficulty in certain kinds of semantic retrieval, despite the fact that vocabularies and knowledge stores typically improve with age.

A second line of research involves asking questions about how this semantic system is organized in young adults, understanding which helps form a basis for asking questions about older adults. To what degree are these semantic retrieval processes lateralized? What cognitive factors affect this laterality? How are brain structures like the corpus callosum involved in mediating distributed activation patterns associated with semantic retrieval? 

I am a clinical psychologist with a primary interest in outpatient interventions for difficulties managing emotional experiences that interfere with well-being. As a clinician, I specialize in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for adults who report a variety of mental health problems, including personality, mood, anxiety, eating, trauma, stress-related, adjustment, and impulse control disorders. My approach to psychotherapy includes working collaboratively with my patients to identify their unique life and therapy goals and implementing evidence-based interventions to achieve the identified goals. As an educator, I train clinicians nationally and teach graduate students, psychology and psychiatry residents in in how to effectively apply CBT and DBT in their clinical work. As a researcher, I focus on psychotherapy optimization and neuroscience-informed treatment development for emotion dysregulation. My research keeps me up to date with the latest evidence-based approaches to use in my clinical work, and my work with patients strongly influences the research that I do.  Outside of work, I enjoy traveling, gourmet food, nature adventures, and time with friends with family.

Sarah Hollingsworth “Holly” Lisanby, MD, is an experienced translational researcher and innovator of neuromodulation technologies to study and treat psychiatric disorders. Dr. Lisanby is Director of the Division of Translational Research at NIMH, which funds research on the discovery of preventions, treatments, and cures for mental illness across the lifespan.  She is Founder and Director of the Noninvasive Neuromodulation Unit in the NIMH Intramural Research Program, a multi-disciplinary clinical research program specializing in the innovation of new brain stimulation tools to measure and modulate neuroplasticity to improve mental health.  Dr. Lisanby is former Chair of the Duke Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, and JP Gibbons Endowed Professor at Duke University.  She founded and directed both the Duke and the Columbia University Divisions of Brain Stimulation, where she built interdisciplinary research programs specializing in the convergence of Psychiatry, Neuroscience and Engineering. She co-led the NIH BRAIN Initiative Team focused on large-scale neural recording and modulation devices. Dr. Lisanby has been principal investigator on a series of federally funded grants on the development of novel neuromodulation technologies, including the rational design of magnetic and electrical seizure therapies.  Her team pioneered magnetic seizure therapy (MST) as a novel depression treatment from the stages of animal testing, first-in-human, and international clinical trials.  She led a series of studies involving transcranial magnetic stimulation, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), MST, vagus nerve stimulation, and deep brain stimulation. She has received numerous international recognitions, including the Max Hamilton Memorial Prize of the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum, the Gerald Klerman Award from the National Depression and Manic Depression Association, and the Eva King Killam Research Award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.  She has been a member of the NIMH Board of Scientific Counselors. Dr. Lisanby served on the FDA Neurological Devices Advisory Panel and has held key leadership positions with numerous professional associations, including serving as President for the Association for Convulsive Therapy/International Society of Neurostimulation, and the International Society for Transcranial Stimulation, and Chair of the American Psychiatric Association Task Force to Revise the Practice on ECT. 

Professor Strauman's research focuses on the psychological and neurobiological processes that enable self-regulation, conceptualized in terms of a cognitive/motivational perspective, as well as the relation between self-regulation and affect. Particular areas of emphasis include: (1) conceptualizing self-regulation in terms of brain/behavior motivational systems; (2) the role of self-regulatory cognitive processes in vulnerability to depression and other disorders; (3) the impact of treatments for depression, such as psychotherapy and medication, on self-regulatory function and dysfunction in depression; (4) how normative and non-normative socialization patterns influence the development of self-regulatory systems; (5) the contributory roles of self-regulation, affect, and psychopathology in determining immunologically-mediated susceptibility to illness; (6) development of novel multi-component treatments for depression targeting self-regulatory dysfunction; (7) utilization of brain imaging techniques to test hypotheses concerning self-regulation, including the nature and function of hypothetical regulatory systems and characterizing the breakdowns in self-regulation that lead to and accompany depression.