Sackler Institute _{for Developmental Psychobiology}

CBGB promotes collaborations among neuroscientists, molecular biologists, geneticists, psychiatrists, developmental and cognitive psychologists, physicists, and statisticians to define the important role of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and experiential events (e.g., stress, enrichment) on different forms of learning across development.

The Center is funded by the NIMH and grew from the vision and generosity of the Dr. Mortimer D. Sackler family. The center is also supported by the infrastructure provided by the WCMC Citigroup Biomedical Imaging Center and the Biomedical Imaging Core, directed by Dr. Doug Ballon.

Three main questions addressed by the CBGB are:

How does genotype affect learning throughout development?

How does genotype affect the response to early postnatal stress?

How can genotype-imposed abnormal responses to stress be modified?

2010-2011 Progress Report

 

Project I: Impact of BDNF Phenotype on Brain Development and Learning

Principal Investigator:	BJ Casey, Sackler Institute, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Co-Investigators:	Dima Amso, Sackler Institute, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
	Nim Tottenham, Assistant Professor, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
	Henning Voss, Assistant Professor, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
	Andrew Leon, Professor, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
	Charles Glatt, Assistant Professor, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
	Conor Liston, Weill Medical College of Cornell & Rockefeller University
Predoctoral Fellow:	Fatima Soliman, Weill Medical College of Cornell & Rockefeller University

B. J. Casey, Ph.D. is a leading authority on the application of neuroimaging techniques to study the developing human brain, and authored the first paper on the use of fMRI in a normative developmental study. She is the Sackler Professor of Developmental Psychobiology and the Director of the Sackler Institute for Psychobiology of Development at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and has an international reputation for her work in cognitive development and the use of cutting edge methods in addressing developmental questions about brain and behavior. As Director of the annual John Merck Summer Institute and of the Weill Medical College Neuroscience Graduate Program, Dr. Casey will integrate training opportunities with Center's research.

Dima Amso, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the Sackler Institute, Weill Medical College of Cornell University. She is an expert in both cognitive development and the application of imaging techniques to the study of learning and development. Dr. Amso has expertise in developing behavioral tasks that can be used across development.

Nim Tottenham, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is an expert in the design and implementation of neuroimaging studies and behavioral tasks that assess emotional development. Dr. Tottenham is an expert in developing behavioral probes specific to populations with social and emotional difficulties.

Henning Voss, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the department of radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is an MR physicist and has programmed scan sequences and optimized them. In addition he has developed programs to assess on-line data quality.

Charles Glatt, MD, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. His current research program is focused on studies of allele-specific gene expression in human brain and related association studies of behavior. He has 7 years experience with implementing genotyping strategies for human genetic studies and is familiar with a number of genotyping technologies. He has also implemented sample processing and tracking pipelines for his work and collaborations with clinical investigators.

Andrew Leon, Ph.D. is a Professor of Biostatistics in Psychiatry and Professor of Public Health at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. His ongoing NIMH-funded research has developed and evaluated statistical techniques for treatment effectiveness analyses in observational studies. He is also examining methods of accounting for the problem of missing data in randomized controlled clinical trials. He is a member of the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee of the US Food and Drug Administration.

Conor Liston, M.D.,Ph.D. is a resident at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He is interested in applying the techniques of basic neuroscience - cell morphometry, pharmacological manipulations, behavioral assays, MRI, computational modeling - to questions that might elucidate the relationship between clinical symptomatology and neuropathology in psychiatric and neurological diseases. Presently, he is investigating the effects of stress, which may precipitate many psychiatric conditions, on structural plasticity and attentional control in parallel rodent and human imaging studies.

Fatima Soliman is a M.D.,Ph.D student at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. She is interested in translational research from mouse to human. Presently, she is investigating the effects of genetic contributions to extinction in mice and humans.

 

Project II: Impact of BDNF Genotype and early life stress on learning in adolescents

Principal Investigator:	Megan Gunnar, Ph.D., Professor, University of Minnesota
Co-Principal Investigator:	Kathleen Thomas, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of Minnesota
Senior Research Fellow:	Bonny Donzella, University of Minnesota
MR Physicist:	Bryon Mueller, Ph.D., University of Minnesota

Megan Gunnar, Ph.D. is a Professor of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. She is an expert on the design and implementation of research on children who have experienced adverse early life histories, including those adopted from orphanages. Professor Gunnar has an international reputation for her expertise in the developmental psychobiology of stress in human development and has pioneered much of the research on the HPA axis and its role in human developmental stress reactivity and regulation.

Kathleen Thomas, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Thomas' laboratory explores the development and neurobiological correlates of nondeclarative or implicit learning during the preschool and school age periods. Her research applies neurophysiological techniques such as high-density event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional MRI to address the interactions among multiple neural systems involved in learning.

Bonny Donzella, M.A. is a Senior Research Fellow in the Human Developmental Psychobiology Laboratory of Dr. Megan Gunnar, University of Minnesota, where she coordinates the laboratory testing of children on measures of psychobiology, cognitive functioning, and emotion. She has worked with Dr. Megan Gunnar on research to understand the psychosocial regulation of stress physiology in early childhood and the relations of stress system activity to children's socioemotional development.

Bryon Mueller, Ph.D. is an MR physicist and Assistant Professor in the Psychiatry department at the University of Minnesota. He is an expert in the design, implementation, and analysis of multi-site neuroimaging studies. Dr. Mueller's experience includes work as co-investigator in the fBIRN and MIND projects.

 

Project III: Impact of stress and enrichment on a mouse model of the BDNF Val66Met SNP

Principal Investigator:	Francis Lee, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Co-Principal Investigator:	Barbara Hempstead, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Postdoctoral Fellows:	Deqiang Jing, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
	Kevin Bath, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Predoctoral Fellow:	Ruchi Kapoor, Weill Medical College of Cornell & Rockefeller University
Predoctoral Fellow:	Rebecca Jones, Weill Medical College of Cornell
Consultant:	Tallie Baram, Professor, UC-lrvine
	Helen Scharfman, Helen Hayes Hospital

Francis S. Lee MD, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and Pharmacology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He has over 8 years experience in the methods of molecular biology and analyses of in vivo consequences of the neurotrophin system. His research has necessitated the development of the primary Val66Met mouse, which contains the human genetic variant form of BDNF (Val66Met).

Barbara Hempstead MD, Ph.D. is the O. Wayne Isom Professor of Medicine and Co-Division Chief, Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Hempstead has an international reputation in neurotrophin biology, as well as in the analyses of transgenic neurotrophin mice.

Deqiang Jing, MD, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He has over 10 years experience in neuroanatomy and in a broad range of histological techniques. He has a particular expertise in Golgi-Cox staining of neurons.

Kevin Bath, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He has training in behavioral neuroscience and six years experience with developing rodent behavioral paradigms.

Tallie Z. Baram (Consultant) holds the Danette D. Shepard Endowed Chair in Neurological Sciences at the University of California at Irvine. She is a world-recognized expert in early stress effects on the developing hippocampus and the role of corticotrophin releasing factor in these effects and, in 2005 received the major basic research award from the American Epilepsy Society.

Helen Scharfman (Consultant) is the Director for the Center for Neural Recovery and Rehabilitation Research and the Helen Hayes Hospital, NY State Dept. of Health, and Depts. Pharmacology and Neurology, Columbia University. She is an expert in the role of BDNF in the hippocampus. We will cross the BDNFMe mice with a BDNF transgenic overexpressor, which has initially been characterized and maintained by Dr. Scharfman.

 

Administrative Data Management Core:

Director:	BJ Casey, Sackler Professor, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Co-Investigator:	Andrew Leon, Professor, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
	Charles Glatt, Assistant Professor, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
	Doug Ballon, Associate Professor of Physics in Radiology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Administrator:	Deanne Lamb , Center and Sackler Institute Administrator, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Consultants:	Steve Smith, Professor, The Oxford University
	Gary Glover, Professor, The Stanford University School of Medicine
	Bruce Fischl, Associate Professor, The Harvard Medical School
	Bruce McEwen, Professor, The Rockefeller University

B. J. Casey, Ph.D. is a leading authority on the application of neuroimaging techniques to study the developing human brain, and authored the first paper on the use of fMRI in a normative developmental study. She is the Sackler Professor of Developmental Psychobiology and the Director of the Sackler Institute for Psychobiology of Development at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and has an international reputation for her work in cognitive development and the use of cutting edge methods in addressing developmental questions about brain and behavior. As Director of the annual John Merck Summer Institute and Director of the Weill Medical College Neuroscience Graduate Program, Dr. Casey will integrate training opportunities with Center research.

Andrew C. Leon, Ph.D. is a Professor of Biostatistics in Psychiatry and Professor of Public Health at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. His ongoing NIMH-funded research has developed and evaluated statistical techniques for treatment effectiveness analyses in observational studies. He is also examining methods of accounting for the problem of missing data in randomized controlled clinical trials. He is a member of the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee of the US Food and Drug Administration.

Charles Glatt, MD, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. His current research program is focused on studies of allele-specific gene expression in human brain and related association studies of behavior. He has 7 years experience with implementing genotyping strategies for human genetic studies and is familiar with a number of genotyping technologies. He has also implemented sample processing and tracking pipelines for his work and collaborations with clinical investigators.

Doug Ballon, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Physics in Radiology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He specializes in magnetic resonance imaging technology and currently is the director of Weill Cornell's Biomedical Imaging Core at the Citigroup Biomedical Imaging Center.

Deanne Lamb is the Center and Sackler Institute Administrator at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. She has experience administering grants in excess of $10 million. She oversees human resources and human subject and HIPAA compliance, in addition IUCAC compliance for the Center.

Bruce McEwen, Ph.D. (Consultant) is the Alfred E. Mirsky professor of neuroscience and runs the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at Rockefeller University. He is an expert in stress effects on the brain and body and in the structural plasticity of the adult and developing brain. Dr. McEwen has an international reputation for his expertise in these areas. He will work closely with Project III in the studies on mice and also with the investigators in Projects I and II to coordinate the translational aspects of the overall project.

Gary Glover, Ph.D. (Consultant) is a Professor in the Departments of Radiology, Neurosciences & Biophysics, and Engineering & Psychology at The Stanford University School of Medicine. He is the director of The Radiological Sciences Lab where he has developed novel methods in rapid fMRI analysis of human brain function.

Bruce Fischl, Ph.D. (Consultant) is an Associate Professor in The Department of Radiology at The Harvard Medical School. His work is focused on building anatomically accurate models of the human brain, and using them as a substrate for the analysis of functional and structural neuroimaging data. Dr. Fischl is one of the developers of Free Surfer image analysis software which can be used to overlay functional data onto the inflated/flattened cortical surface, or carry out multi-subject FMRI statistics on the cortical surface and to measure the thickness of the gray matter of the cortex.

Steve Smith, Ph.D. (Consultant) is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and the Associate Director at The Oxford University Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB). Dr. Smith's research is focused on statistical approaches to brain image analysis. He has developed a brain imaging analysis software (FSL) that is widely used in many laboratories internationally.

Statistical Genetics Core

Principal Investigator:	Andrew Clark, Professor, Cornell University
Co-Investigator:	Carlos Bustamente, Assistant Professor, Cornell University
	Jason Mezey, Assistant Professor, Cornell University

Andrew Clark, Ph.D. is a Professor of Population Genetics in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University, Ithaca. He is a leading authority in population and statistical genetics. He has worked on several whole-genome association studies of complex human traits and was a contributor to The International HapMap Project.

Carlos Bustamente, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in The Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology at Cornell University, Ithaca. He has extensive experience in developing statistical methods for inference in population and comparative genomics as well as whole-genome association mapping of complex traits in human and model species.

Jason Mezey, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in The Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology at Cornell University, Ithaca. His research interests are focused on statistical and computational approaches for finding genes underlying quantitative traits and modeling genetic networks and developmental pathways.