Past Events

2019

PARTNeR has been rebooted!

January – PARTNeR Kick-Off Lunch

Our first meeting this academic year was be a meet and greet where we will discuss our goals for the upcoming year and welcome new post-docs and residents.

March – Resident Research Presentation

June – Resident & Post-Doc Presentation

Aggression in mice and men co-presented by post-doc Yael Grossman & resident Alex Bey

2017

Wednesday November 1st at noon. Location: Sands 323

Led by Resident Physician Christian Bjerre Real, MD, we will discuss the recent resurgence of interest in Psychedelics for treating mental illness.

Wednesday April 5th at noon. Location: Psychiatry Conference Room 4081 Yellow Zone, Duke South 

Scott Huettel, PhD, is the Jerry G. and Patricia Crawford Hubbard Professor and Chair of the Dept of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University Trinity Graduate School as well as Director of the D-CIDES (Duke Center for Interdisciplinary Decision Science) at Duke Institute for Brain Sciences (DIBS).

His research investigates the brain mechanisms underlying economic and social decision-making; collectively, this research falls into the field of “decision neuroscience” or “neuroeconomics”. His laboratory uses fMRI to probe brain function, behavioral assays to characterize individual differences, and other physiological methods (e.g., eye tracking, pharmacological manipulation, genetics) to link brain and behavior. Concurrent with research on basic processes, my laboratory has also investigated the application of new analysis methods for fMRI data, including functional connectivity analyses, pattern classification analyses, and combinatoric multivariate approaches and applying computational methods to problems in behavioral economics and consumer decision-making.

Wednesday January 4th at noon. Location: Clinical and Research Laboratory (CARL) Building Room 408.

We hosted John Pearson, PhD and Steven Szabo, MD, PhD for a discussion about the Eye-tracking and Pupillometry Research in Mental Illness.

Dr. Pearson earned his bachelor’s degree in physics and math from the University of Kentucky and his PhD in physics from Princeton. He became a neuroscientist at Duke, where he did his postdoctoral training with Michael Platt, working on the neurobiology of reward and decision-making. He joined the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences as a Research Assistant Professor in 2015. https://pearsonlab.github.io/

Dr. Szabo is a Psychiatrist with appointments at Duke and the Durham VAMC. He is involved in many projects including a Pilot Dose-Response Biomarker Study of Brexpiprazole Treatment in PTSD, Reducing Suicide Ideation Through Insomnia Treatment (REST-IT), Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) as a treatment for Acute Fear, the Duke site for the FAST-MAS (Mood and Anxiety Spectrum Disorders) Phase 2A trial, toxicity in Alzheimer’s Disease research and Eye-tracking and Pupillometry research for Anxiety and Fear.

2016

Wednesday October 5th at noon. Location: Clinical and Research Laboratory (CARL) Building Room 208.

Welcome to PARTNeR! Our first meeting this academic year will be a meet and greet where we will discuss our goals for the upcoming year and welcome new post-docs and residents.

Tuesday June 14th at noon in the Clinical and Research Laboratory (CARL) Building Room 208

We will have a special guest with us, Dr. Felipe De Brigard, Assistant Professor in Philosophy and core faculty in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. Dr. De Brigard will discuss his research on the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and philosophy, with particular focus on counterfactual thinking and its relevance for mental health and therapy.

Tuesday April 26th at noon in the Clinical and Research Laboratory (CARL) Building Room 208
We will have a special guest with us, Dr. Scott Kollins, Vice-Chair for Research Strategy and Development, Director of the Duke ADHD Program, and Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Kollins will share a little bit about his career path and discuss ideas on how to build a successful career in translational science as well as how to build productive collaborations between clinicians and basic scientists. 

Tuesday February 2nd at noon in Duke North Room 2270
Please join us for our first PARTNeR meeting of 2016. Francis Joseph (Joe) McClernon, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Addiction Division Director, will be our special guest discussion leader. Discussion topics include:
– Translational neuroscience of addiction
– Translational science at Duke, at the NIH, etc.: Where do you see the field of translational science going?
– What are the biggest unanswered questions in the field?
– How can MDs and PhDs collaborate effectively?
– Career advice for newly minted MDs and PhDs

Tuesday November 24th at noon in the Clinical and Research Laboratory (CARL) Building Room 208
Post-doc Kim Chiew, PhD and psychiatry resident Jason Cho, MD will be talking about mindfulness, both in terms of mindfulness research in cognitive neuroscience and how it has been used in a clinical setting, as well as how it can be understood in terms of regulating attentional control to promote well-being. This will be the last meeting before the holidays. If you’d like to help lead a discussion sometime between January and June 2016, please email us. 

Tuesday October 27th at noon in the Clinical and Research Laboratory (CARL) Building Room 208
Post-doc Rainbo Hultman, PhD and psychiatry resident Mike Kritzer-Cheren, MD, PhD will be teaming up for a discussion about PTSD and Alcohol Use Disorder, two highly co-morbid diagnoses.

Tuesday September 22nd at noon in the Clinical and Research Laboratory (CARL) Building Room 208
We will be doing the first collaborative post-doc/resident presentation to kick things off. Katie will be discussing her research involving real-time fMRI of the dopaminergic midbrain in healthy humans along with plans to extend the study to clinical populations. Betsy will pick up there with a discussion about the clinical populations for whom the studies are relevant with a particular focus on how RDoC is changing the way mental disorders are studied.

Tuesday August 25th at noon in the Clinical and Research Laboratory (CARL) Building Room 208
This first meeting of the academic semester will be largely a meet and greet with a general orientation to the group and a brainstorming session to help set goals and make plans for the coming year. In general, these meetings provide opportunities to meet with other people at a similar stage in life with both similar and complementary interests in the neuroscience of mental health and disease. 

Thursday April 30th at 5:45 pm in Bryan Research Building Room 301
In this meeting we will welcome the first ever Duke NAMI Walks team! This will be a wonderful opportunity for the team to meet each other and get excited for walk day – this upcoming Saturday May 2nd, 2015. Please join us even if you do not plan to attend the walk as it will be a great opportunity to meet fellow individuals interested in mental health research, awareness, and advocacy.

Thursday March 5th at 5:45 pm in Bryan Research Building Room 301
Rainbo Hultman, a post-doc in Dr. Kafui Dzirasa’s lab will be chatting with us about NAMI NC Walks, a fundraising and awareness walk to be held on May 2nd, 2015. We are hoping to get a team together to walk and we will brainstorm ideas for getting people involved. Note, Rainbo was at this event last year and had a wonderful time – it is great way to bring the mental health community together.

Tuesday January 27th at 5:45 pm in Bryan Research Building Room 301
Duke-VA Chief Resident Wilbur Dattilo will be facilitating a discussion about potential links between schizophrenia and autism. Please bring ideas from your own experience, research, and reading!

2014

Tuesday November 25^th at 5:45 pm in Bryan Research Building Room 301
Post-doc Katie Dickerson will discuss the translational neuroscience conference she attended.

Tuesday October 28^th at 5:45 pm in Bryan Research Building Room 301
We are excited to have Steve Szabo, MD, PhD as our guest speaker to talk about using neuroscience and pharmacology to translate brain sciences into relevant psychiatric applications in patients. It should be a great discussion.

Tuesday September 23^rd at 5:45 pm in Bryan Research Building Room 301
We will welcome new residents and post-docs and determine a concrete plan for the resident-post-doc interactions we discussed at our last meeting (e.g., shadowing opportunities in both directions).

Tuesday July 22^nd at 5:45 pm in Bryan Research Building Room 301
We are very excited to have the following expert panelists with us to discuss translational neuroscience research:

– R. Alison Adcock, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
– S. Holly Lisanby, MD, Professor and Chair, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
– Kafui Dzirasa, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Drs. Adcock, Lisanby, and Dzirasa are all currently conducting very successful translational neuroscience programs here at Duke. They will discuss with us topics including: the challenges of conducing translational research, what they feel are the largest gaps in the field, how to develop cutting edge translational questions, how we can facilitate better communication and collaboration between clinicians and basic scientists, etc.

Tuesday June 24^th at 5:45 pm in Classroom 4 of the Trent Semans Center
We will discuss ways to improve clinical and research communication through presentations. This will be a group discussion incorporating questions, ideas, and experiences about what is effective (and not so effective) in presentations given by researchers to clinicians and by clinicians to researchers. The goal is to make us all better communicators with those with different backgrounds.

Tuesday May 27^th at 5:45 pm in Classroom 4 of the Trent Semans Center
Representatives from the local National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI; http://www.nami.org) chapters will be joining us to talk about their organization, which is dedicated to improving the lives of the millions of Americans affected by mental illness. Tuesday’s meeting will be focused on the ways that Duke researchers and residents can learn from and engage with this great organization. The meeting starts at 5:45 and light refreshments will be served – so come by after work and join us for a fantastic opportunity for postdocs and residents to get to know each other and generate ways to get involved with the community!

Tuesday April 22nd at 5:45 pm in Conference Room 4B/4C of the Trent Semans Center
This will be a housekeeping meeting in which we will recap and discuss our first panel discussion (February) and plan for our next panel discussion.

Tuesday February 25th at 5:45 pm in Classroom 4 of the Trent Semans Center
We will have a panel discussion including both clinicians and scientists who are experts in the field of addiction. We are very excited that the following members of the Duke community are able to join us:

– Roy Stein, MD, Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
– Christine Tew, MS, LPC, LCAS, Duke Adult Psychiatry Clinic
– Joe McClernon, PhD, Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
– Nicole Schramm-Sapyta, PhD, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

2013