Recent SIG activities include: (1) Establishing a repository of information on measures relevant to the genetics and neuroscience study of anxiety and depression, so that anyone in the ADAA community can learn what measures are out there, how to find them, and how they link to other units of analysis within the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) domain, and (2) Providing monthly updates on articles relevant to the group’s focus.

At the 2018 ADAA Annual Conference in Washington DC., the SIG hosted a symposium on Ketamine as a Novel Approach for Treatment-Resistant Depression and Anxiety," presented by Drs. Carlos Zarate (National Institute of Mental Health) and Chadi Abdallah (Yale University).


If you’re interested in joining this SIG, please login to your member account and choose Groups from the green menu bar at the top of your screen. Have a question about the member platform? Please contact Vickie Spielman, ADAA Associate Director of Membership and Marketing.


SIG Co-Chairs:

  • Lynnette A. Averill, PhD, National Center for PTSD
  • Karmel Choi, PhD, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
  • Namik Kirlic, PhD, Laureate Institute for Brain Research
  • Daniel Levey, PhD, Yale University/VA Connecticut Healthcare System

Former SIG Co-Chairs:

  • Sanne van Rooij, PhD (2017-2019)
  • Sahib Khalsa, PhD (2017-2019)

Board Liasion:
Sheila Rauch, PhD, ABPP, Emory University School of Medicine 

GAN SIG Members in the News

2019-2020 Annual Report 

The Genetics and Neuroscience SIG has continued to engage the ADAA community in the past year and looks forward to our planned events and updates in the coming year. 

During the 2018-2019 period, the GAN SIG hosted to primary events. First, Dr. Jordan Smoller presented a webinar in December 2018 titled, “Genetics of depression and anxiety: What do clinicians need to know?” Dr. Smoller is the MHC Trustees Endowed Chair in Psychiatric Neuroscience, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. He is Associate Chief for Research in the MGH Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit in the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine. Dr. Smoller is a Tepper Family MGH Research Scholar and also serves as Director of the Omics Unit of the MGH Division of Clinical Research and co-Director of the Partners HealthCare Biobank at MGH. He is a Principal Investigator of All of Us New England as part of the NIH All of Us Research Program. Dr. Smoller is an author of more than 300 scientific publications and is also the author of The Other Side of Normal (HarperCollins/William Morrow, 2012). In his webinar, he described the current status of psychiatric genetic research with a focus on depressive and anxiety disorders and reviewed implications of this work for clinical practice, including the prospects and limitations of genetic or pharmacogenetic testing. He also described the potential for extending a precision medicine approach to the realm of depression and anxiety disorders. The webinar is accessible here

At the 2019 annual conference in Chicago, we hosted a lunchtime symposium titled, “Failure to launch? Promises and pitfalls of genetic/neuroscience predictors in mental health.” Dr. Roy Perlis, Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health and Dr. Isaac Galatzer-Levy, Assistant Professor and Clinical Psychologist/Neuroscientist at NYU School of Medicine and AiCure presented. Dr. Perlis’ work focuses on developing clinical and genomic predictors of treatment response in mood disorders, and on developing novel therapeutics based on cellular models of brain disease. Dr. Galatzer-Levy’s work uses clinical and neuroimaging data to predict trajectories of PTSD development and maintenance. Both speakers gave a 15-minute TED talk-style presentation on the promises and pitfalls of genetics (Dr. Perlis) and neuroimaging (Dr. Galatzer-Levy) predictors in mental health, after which there was some lively discussion from GAN SIG members in attendance. 

Also, at the 2019 annual meeting, new Co-Chairs (Drs. Lynnette Averill and Karmel Choi) were formally introduced in and began their term while out-going Co-Chairs (Drs. Sahib Khalsa and Sanne van Rooij) ended their term. We are very grateful to Sahib and Sanne for their contributions to the GAN SIG and look forward to seeing them at events in the future…and inviting them to present at the webinars and/or lunchtime symposiums.  Dr. Lynnette Averill is an Assistant Professor at Yale School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and a Clinical Research Psychologist at the National Center for PTSD-Clinical Neurosciences Division in Connecticut. Her work focuses on pharmacoimaging trials evaluating rapid-acting antidepressants on suicidal thoughts and behaviors in PTSD as well as investigations into the neural underpinnings of suicidality in chronic stress pathology. Dr. Karmel Choi is a postdoctoral fellow in psychiatric genetics and translational research at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her work focuses primarily on using epidemiology, data science, and genomics to study why people recover from stress and trauma, in order to identify ways to improve human resilience and well-being across the life course. 

Two new Co-Chairs have been recruited and we are delighted to have them on board. Dr. Dan Levey is a current postdoctoral fellow at Yale School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry in Connecticut, where his research focuses mainly on the genetics of anxiety and depression in the Million Veteran (MVP) program participants. He has also done work investigating transcriptomic biomarkers associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Dr. Namik Kirlic is an Associate Investigator and Clinical Psychologist at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research (LIBR) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His line of research focuses mainly on understanding neural correlates of threat and approach-avoidance processing in mood and anxiety disorders, as well as working to leverage neuroscience to establish preventative intervention for adverse consequences of childhood maltreatment. 

We are currently planning a webinar (hopefully) for late winter or early spring as well as the details of our lunchtime seminar at the annual meeting in San Antonio. We continue to brainstorm ideas to increase engagement with GAN SIG members as well as seeking possible ways to collaborate with other SIGs or other groups within ADAA. Stay tuned for additional details. 

We very much look forward to the upcoming 2020 conference in San Antonio and the exciting programming overall, with special emphasis on the events related to the genetic and neuroscience underpinnings of resilience. 

See you in March! 

Cheers,

The Fantastic Four GAN SIG Co-Chairs 
Karmel & Nette (Co-Chairs, 2019-2021)
Dan & Namik (Co-Chairs, 2020-2022)
 
 

Please view the ADAA SIG Guidelines for responsibilities and expectations.