Translational Research Related Content

PTSD: More Than Trauma

Studying stress-related factors in animals is an important first step in understanding what ails us and how to fix it. But that research only goes so far, particularly when these factors also confer risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in human beings. As part of a 5-year, $13.5 million...

Discovery @ McLean Hospital 2019

Read the latest on the breakthroughs that McLean’s researchers are making in identifying the roots of PTSD. Identifying the Roots of PTSD Survival. In an animal kingdom enriched by a diversity of species, it is the one trait shared by organisms as simple as worms and as complex as humans. And the...

Nurses Highlight Neuroscience and Mental Health Research

The tenth annual McLean Research Day took place on Wednesday, January 30, 2019. The event featured approximately 125 posters of new research from McLean investigators across the hospital, representing basic science, translational, clinical, neuroimaging, health services, and implementation science...

Advancing the Understanding of PTSD

Perhaps one of the most misused words in modern society, “trauma” is used in daily language to describe all sorts of unpleasant or uncomfortable situations. But for 5-10% of the population, trauma and the accompanying post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a very precise condition with very real...

Brain Wiring Helps Illuminate Range of Uses for Non-Drug Therapies

Imagine if depression or obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) could be treated with non-drug therapies, such as those currently being used to tackle Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders. Suzanne Haber, PhD, is working toward that goal in her labs at McLean Hospital and the University of...

Discovery @ McLean Hospital 2018

This edition of Discovery demonstrates some of the depth and breadth of research at McLean Hospital. With hundreds of hardworking researchers who hail from all parts of the world, our robust research program has all the tools to bring research from the bench to the bedside. There is much more...

New Smartphone App Helps During Mental Health Treatment Transition

The transition out of an inpatient psychiatric setting is never easy—for the patient or the clinician. And the challenge escalates after the day program ends and the patient returns home. Now, clinicians at McLean Hospital’s Behavioral Health Partial Hospital Program (BHP), a day program that...

Foundation Gift Enables Cannabis Research

For a substance that has been used by humans for more than 5,000 years, there remains much to learn about marijuana’s effects on the brain. McLean neuroscientist and clinical researcher Staci Gruber, PhD, has spent more than two decades trying to advance knowledge in this domain. Now, with the help...

Staff Profile: Roger D. Weiss, MD

Dr. Weiss’ career has focused on treatment and clinical research with substance-dependent patients. He has received numerous NIH grants, including for developing integrated group therapy, an evidence-based treatment for co-occurring bipolar and substance use disorders, and leading a multi-site...

Staff Profile: Shelly F. Greenfield, MD, MPH

Shelly F. Greenfield, MD, MPH, is an addiction psychiatrist, clinician, and researcher. She serves as principal and co-investigator on federally funded research focusing on substance use disorders treatment, gender differences, and substance health services. She received a National Institute on Drug...

Staff Profile: Bruce M. Cohen, MD, PhD

Bruce M. Cohen, MD, PhD, leads a multidisciplinary research program on the causes of psychiatric disorders, with the goal of developing new, more effective, and better tolerated treatments. He and his colleagues employ pharmacologic, brain imaging, epidemiologic, genomic, and cell model approaches...

Staff Profile: Marc L. Copersino, PhD, ABPP-CP

Marc L. Copersino, PhD, ABPP-CP, is affiliated with the Division of Alcohol, Drugs, and Addiction and works collaboratively with members of the McLean Imaging Center. He conducts patient-oriented research focusing on the clinical neuroscience and treatment of substance use disorders (SUD) in two...

Staff Profile: Peter Siekmeier, MS, MD

As director of the Laboratory for Computational Neuroscience, Dr. Siekmeier’s research centers on the computational modeling of the hippocampus, an area of brain thought to be responsible for encoding memories, and one that has been implicated in the etiology of schizophrenia. The goals of this...

Staff Profile: Kai-Christian Sonntag, MD, PhD

As a graduate of University of Heidelberg Medical School, Dr. Sonntag studied the molecular biology of viruses, and as a research fellow at the Transplantation Biology Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, he conducted research in transplantation immunology. In 2000, he joined McLean...

Research

McLean Hospital maintains the largest neuroscience and psychiatry research program of any private psychiatric hospital in the United States. Investigators are gaining insight into the causes of mental illness and neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders by using cutting-edge approaches and...

Investigators

McLean’s robust research program, with numerous laboratories and more than 400 research scientists and staff, is backed by almost $50 million in funding.

Staff Profile: Fredric Schiffer, MD

Fredric Schiffer, MD, is a research associate at McLean and an assistant professor of psychiatry, part-time, at Harvard Medical School. He has been studying the relationship between past traumas, cerebral laterality, and depression and anxiety, and has developed a hypothesis on the physical nature...