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Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

General Psychiatry Residency Program

PGY - 4 Research Electives

In addition to the specific listings below, residents are encouraged to contact any of the research faculty about the possibility of doing a elective in their area of study. For an index of all research labs, programs, and projects in the Department go to Research.

Also available, Electives for PGY-4 Psychiatry Residents at Bayview, a compendium of Bayview research faculty and their areas of interest and contact information.

Brain Stimulation | Childhood Anxiety | Mood Disorders | Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder | Pediatrics and Psychiatry | Schizophrenia and Molecular Psychiatry | Somatic Conditions

Brain Stimulation

General Research Areas: Brain Stimulation

Specific Research Type: ECT, rTMS

Experience Offered:

  • Extensive training in the available brain stimulation treatment modalities, including clinical and research repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and novel approaches to ECT that enhance efficacy and decrease cognitive side-effects.
  • Evaluate new outpatients receiving either ECT or rTMS and follow them up as they are treated.

In addition, the resident will learn about and contribute to at least one of several research projects including:

  • Clinical and laboratory studies investigating the cause of ECT cognitive side-effects
  • Clinical trials of rTMS including an experimental T MS coil
  • Laboratory studies investigating ECT mechanism of action

Learning Expectation: The resident will learn to administer brain stimulation treatments and take care of patients receiving such. The resident will also contribute to at least one brain stimulation research project.

Faculty Contact: Irving M. Reti M.D. | Call 410-955-1484 or emaill: [email protected]

Website: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/brain_stimulation

Childhood Anxiety

General Research Areas: Childhood Anxiety

Specific Research Type: Treatment, Prevention, Etiology, Assessment, High Risk

Experience Offered:

  • Work with active and productive research group to conduct, propose and disseminate research.
  • Access to extensive data bases of youth with anxiety, depression, and healthy controls.
  • Participate in weekly research meetings.
  • Assist with all aspects of research process.

Learning Expectation:

  • Assist with all aspects of research process, design and conduct a research study using the available data bases, and prepare grant, poster and/or publication.

Faculty Contact: Marco A Grados, M.D., M.P.H. | Email: [email protected]  

Mood Disorders

General Research Areas: Mood disorders

Specific Research Type: Genetics and epigenetics from a clinical, molecular, and/or data analytic perspective

Experience Offered:

  • Work with a research group that includes expert clinicians, bench scientists in genetics and neuroscience, and bioinformaticists/genetic epidemiologists
  • Access extensive data bases of ~10,000 depression and bipolar disorder cases with comprehensive psychpathologic and genotypic information.
  • Participate in weekly research meetings
  • Your experience can be focused on any one of the three areas that we study: clinically-oriented, bench-oriented, or data-analysis oriented genetics and epigenetics

Description:

Our work focuses on identifying genes that confer risk for developing major depression and bipolar disorder. The work has several facets including assessment of people with these illnesses and their families, laboratory experiments using DNA from these volunteers, and analysis of the clinical and genetic information obtained. We currently have projects involving new clinical assessments for bipolar disorder and for major depression. In the lab we perform DNA sequencing experiments to find new variations within potential disease genes, association experiments to test the DNA sequence variations in large numbers of samples, and epigenetic studies to determine whether particular genes are abnormally regulated. Our data analysis projects have been particularly focused on examining clinical features of illness such as psychotic symptoms, for example, that might correlate with patterns seen in patients' DNA, and thus distinguish genetically important disease subtypes. Student participation could be in any phase of these projects, including clinical ascertainment, lab experiments, or data analysis.

Availability/Duration: All year; summer (i.e., June, July & August) Preferable/minimum of 8 weeks

Prerequisites: None

Faculty Contact: Fernando Goes, MD | Call 443-287-6382 or email: [email protected]

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

General Research Areas: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; General Psychopathology (including personality).

Specific Research Type: Genetics, clinical epidemiology, other (e.g. imaging studies)

Experience Offered:

  • Work with research group that includes Gerald Nestadt, Joe Bienvenu, Jack Samuels, Mark Riddle, Marco Grados, Graham Redgrave, Fernando Goes, Kung-Yee Liang, Brion Maher, and Bernadette Cullen
  • Access extensive data bases of ~1,200 OCD cases with comprehensive psychopathologic, personality, and genotypic information as well as ~800 longitudinal (17 years) psychopathology assessments of community-residing individuals.
  • Participate in weekly faculty research and clinical research meetings

Learning Expectation:

  • Design and conduct a research study using the available data base and prepare a paper for publication.

Faculty Contact: Gerald Nestadt, M.D., M.P.H. | Call 410-955-4838 or email: [email protected]

Web site: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/odc

Pediatrics and Psychiatry

General Research Areas: Interface between Pediatrics and Psychiatry, Consultation - Liaison and Psychosomatic Medicine

Specific Research Type: database review, access to care, epidemiology

Experience Offered:

  • Access to database of > 600 consultations performed on pediatric patients in the Children's Hospital
  • Weekly meeting with mentoring attending
  • Interviewing / evaluating new consultation cases with child psychiatry fellows

Learning Expectation:

  • Design and conduct a research study using the available data base and prepare a paper for publication.

Faculty Contact: Marco A Grados, M.D., M.P.H. | Email: [email protected]

Schizophrenia and Molecular Psychiatray

There are three major projects for PGY-4 research electives: 1) PET and MRI/MRS brain imaging, and 2) Molecular epidemiology. These two approaches are interconnected under a working hypothesis that a major pathology of schizophrenia and related disorders includes aberrant stress response and inflammation that are also associated with co-morbid physical conditions.

Learn more at Schizophrenia Center Website

1) PET and MRI/MRS brain imaging

General Research Areas: Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and dementia (including HIV-, TBI-, and SLE-associated neuropsychiatric conditions)

Specific Research Type:

  1. Imaging and imaging agent development - focus on positron emission tomography of neurotransmission and inflammation
  2. Molecular magnetic resonance-based imaging approach using spectroscopy to identify changed neurochemical biomarkers in the brain

Experience Offered:

  • Work with a 20 person research group dedicated to developing new techniques and probes for imaging a wide variety of disorders with an emphasis on central nervous system disease.
  • Training in imaging studies, image analysis and processing with a focus on PET. Studies are pre-clinical (small animal imaging) and clinical. Skills in performing autoradiography, immunohistochemistry and other correlative studies (e.g., genotyping, MR-related imaging) with PET imaging can be obtained.
  • Training in MR -related data acquisition, processing and image analysis
  • Interface with junior faculty and fellows in psychiatry and radiology already part of the group.

Learning Expectation: Perform pre- and/or clinical imaging studies with a goal of publication and generating grant funding, including "K-type" grants for particularly interested individuals.

Faculty Contact:

2) Molecular epidemiology

General Research Areas: First episode psychosis, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder

Specific Research Type: Epidemiological study of the role of co-morbid physical conditions in the pathology of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, with attention to metabolic factors that affect cognition and inflammatory mediators that influence emotion and cognition.

Experience Offered:

  • Work with a 20 person research group dedicated to statistical analysis to investigate the role of co-morbid physical conditions in the pathology of central nervous system disease.
  • Training in data collection, data storage, and statistical analysis.
  • Interface with junior faculty and fellows in psychiatry and the school of public health who are already part of the group.

Learning Expectation: Perform molecular epidemiological studies with a goal of publication and generating grant funding, including "K-type" grants for particularly interested individuals.

Faculty Contact:

Somatic Conditions in Persons with Serious Mental Illness

General Research Areas: Somatic conditions in persons with serious mental illness, health services research, patient safety, cardiovascular risk reduction and decreasing premature mortality in persons with mental illness

Specific Research Type: randomized clinical trial, chart review, health services, epidemiology

Experience Offered:

  • Work with Dr. Gail Daumit, a general internist with joint appointments in Psychiatry and Mental Health, Epidemiology and Healthy Policy and Management
  • Work with data from randomized clinical trial of a behavioral weight loss intervention for persons with serious mental illness is 10 psychiatric rehabilitation programs across Maryland. Data available for analysis and manuscript writing.
  • Work with data from large chart review on patient safety for persons with serious mental illness during medical and surgical hospitalizations
  • Work with Medicaid databases
  • Mentorship provided

Learning Expectation:

  • Design and conduct a research study using the available data base and prepare a paper for publication.

Faculty Contact: Gail Daumit, MD, MHS | Call 410-614-6460 or email [email protected]