Physician Investigator (Cl) Psychiatry, Mass General Research Institute

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry Harvard Medical School

Psychiatrist Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital

MD 1981

adolescent anxiety; brain imaging; cognitive stress; fmri; inhibition (psychology); introversion (psychology); mood disorders; psychopathology; psychophysiology; recognition (psychology); social anxiety disorder; social stress; temperament

This research program seeks to understand the relationship between very early psychological predispositions and physiological states in infants (i.e. temperament) and the development of psychiatric disorder (particularly anxiety and mood disorders) and behavior problems in adolescents and young adults, through studies of cohorts of infants and children who have been followed longitudinally through development.

Our laboratory utilizes functional magnetic resonance brain imaging, in conjunction with clinical assessments of psychopathology, direct observation of behavior and social interaction in the laboratory, neuropsychological studies of information processing, and assessment of autonomic reactivity to cognitive and social stress.

Thus, we are an interdisciplinary group both in terms of training (psychiatrists, developmental psychologists, neurologists, and neuroscientists are all welcome) and methods (behavioral observation, psychophysiology, structural and functional MRI).