Ann K. Shinn, MD, MPH
Director of Clinical Research, Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Research Program
- Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
Biography
As a physician-researcher, Ann K. Shinn, MD, MPH, works to improve the understanding and treatment of psychotic disorders. She has received federal funding to investigate the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and related psychoses using neuroimaging. In addition to her current roles, she is an investigator in the Laboratory for Early Psychosis (LEAP), where her research activities build on her prior experience as a founding co-medical director (2013-2018) of McLean OnTrack, an intensive outpatient program specializing in the treatment of first episode psychosis.
Dr. Shinn is dedicated to teaching and mentoring junior colleagues. She teaches psychiatry residents about early stages of psychosis and bipolar disorder. She is the course director of the Introduction to Clinical Psychiatry and Psychopathology course for second-year medical students in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) Program, and also serves as an MD advisor to HST medical students. In addition to conducting research and teaching, Dr. Shinn engages in editorial activities as the Psychosis Section editor for the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
Among many lines of investigation, Dr. Shinn’s current research includes three main themes: auditory hallucinations, cerebellar abnormalities in psychosis, and the intersection between trauma and psychosis.
Her primary line of investigation has been to better understand voice-hearing, or auditory hallucinations, in psychotic disorders. Dr. Shinn and her colleagues have contributed insights into both clinical and neurobiological aspects of voice-hearing.
Taking a symptom-focused and cross-diagnostic approach, they have identified alterations in functional brain connectivity associated with voice-hearing not only in schizophrenia spectrum disorders but also in bipolar disorder as well as in trauma-related disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Dr. Shinn is an investigator on a federally funded project (led by Margaret Niznikiewicz, PhD, and Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, PhD) to investigate the effect of real-time fMRI neurofeedback on modulation of the superior temporal gyrus, a region of the brain that plays a central role in auditory and language processing, in schizophrenia patients with auditory hallucinations.
Dr. Shinn’s work also concerns investigations into abnormalities of the cerebellum in psychotic disorders.
There is growing evidence that the cerebellum, which is reciprocally connected to higher-level association areas such as the prefrontal cortex, is involved in both non-motor as well as motor functions. Unlike most psychiatric neuroimaging studies that treat the cerebellum as a single homogeneous structure, she systematically investigated the topographic representations of cerebro-cerebellar resting state networks within the cerebellum in schizophrenia as well as in psychotic bipolar disorder.
Dr. Shinn has also conducted a pilot study in collaboration with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) experts to investigate the effect of cerebellar stimulation on psychotic symptoms, including auditory hallucinations, in individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Dr. Shinn’s research interests also include topics at the intersection of trauma and psychosis.
For example, she has shown evidence of high test-retest reliability in self-reports of childhood physical and emotional abuse among people with psychosis. She and her colleagues have found greater self-reported histories of childhood sexual abuse as well as structural brain differences among people with psychotic disorders with auditory hallucinations compared to those without histories of auditory hallucinations.
In addition, Dr. Shinn has collaborated with experts in trauma-related disorders at McLean to report on the high prevalence and phenomenology of voice-hearing experiences among women with PTSD and dissociative disorders.
- Emma Andrikidis, Research Assistant
Former Personnel:
- Mariesa Cay, Research Assistant (2020-2022)
- Marguerite (“Daisy”) Sears, Research Assistant (2020-2022)
- Lena Stone, Research Assistant (2019-2022)
- Melissa Hwang, Research Assistant (2016-2019)
- Youkyung (“Sophie”) Roh, Research Assistant (2015-2017)
- Jess Talero, Research Assistant (2014-2016)
- Joan Camprodon-Gimenez, MD, PhD, MPH, Massachusetts General Hospital
- Bruce M. Cohen, MD, PhD, McLean Hospital
- Fei Du, PhD, McLean Hospital
- Ev Fedorenko, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital
- Mei-Hua Hall, PhD, McLean Hospital
- Milissa Kaufman, MD, PhD, McLean Hospital
- Lauren A.M. Lebois, PhD, McLean Hospital
- Hesheng Liu, PhD, Medical University of South Carolina
- Margaret Niznikiewicz, PhD, VA Medical Center-Brockton
- Dost Öngür, MD, PhD, McLean Hospital
- Martha Shenton, PhD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
- Jaymin Upadhyay, PhD, Boston Children’s Hospital
- Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital
Shinn AK, Bolton KW, Karmacharya R, Lewandowski KE, Yuksel C, Baker JT, Chouinard VA, Pingali SM, Bye H, Cederbaum K, Öngür D. McLean OnTrack: A transdiagnostic program for early intervention in first-episode psychosis. Early Intervention in Psychiatry 2017; 11(1): 83-90.
Hwang M, Roh YS, Talero J, Cohen B, Baker JT, Brady R, Öngür D, Shinn AK. Auditory hallucinations across the psychosis spectrum: evidence of dysconnectivity involving cerebellar and temporal lobe regions. Neuroimage Clinical. 2021;32:102893.
Li M, Lebois LAM, Ridgewell C, Palermo CA, Winternitz S, Liu H, Kaufman M, Shinn AK. Functional connectivity of the auditory cortex in women with trauma-related disorders who hear voices. Biological Psychiatry. Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. 2024;S2451-9022(24)00167-8.
Education & Training
- 1998 BA, Columbia University
- 2001 MPH, UCLA School of Public Health
- 2005 MD, University of California San Francisco School of Medicine
- 2011 MMSc, Harvard Medical School
- 2005-2009 Residency in Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital
- 2008-2009 Chief Resident, Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Program, McLean Hospital
- 2009-2011 Clinical Investigator Training Program, Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
- 2012-2014 The Stuart T. Hauser Clinical Research Training Program in Biological and Social Psychiatry, Judge Baker Children’s Center
- 2009 Medical License, Board of Registration in Medicine, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
- 2010 Psychiatry, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
