In the News

Todd Erik Peters, M.D., Assistant Professor and Associate Chief of Staff of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Medical Director for Inpatient Services, Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital, was named Consulting Editor for Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America.  This publication is considered a top-three publication in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry.  

Warren D. Taylor, M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, served as co-author on a new paper titled "Frontocingulate cerebral blood flow and cerebrovascular reactivity as predictors of antidepressant response in late-life depression." The paper appears in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The study was directed by Dr. Margarita Abi Zeid Daou, a PGY4 resident in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, mentored by Dr. Taylor.

Blythe Corbett, Ph.D., Associate  Director of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Psychology, was recently published in the December 2016 edition of the AMA Journal of Ethics. Her article, "Autism, Art, and Accessibility to Theater," discusses accessibility of the dramatic arts to those on the autism spectrum and uses an attributional model of stigma to explain potential differences in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior toward people with mental illness.

Jonathan E. Becker, D.O., Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences," served as lead author for the paper "Update on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Depression and Other Neuropsychiatric Illnesses" in the publication Psychiatric Annals. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a neuromodulation technique that was first approved for the treatment of major depressive disorder in 2008. Because of the success of TMS in treating depression, there has been interest in applications for other neuropsychiatric diseases.

Warren D Taylor, M.D., MHSc., Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Mood Disorders Program Center for Cognitive Medicine, was recently awarded NIMH funding toward his K24 Midcareer Investigator Award in Patient-Oriented Research. This proposal will support Dr. Taylor in his efforts to mentor young scientists and researchers, from medical students to medical residents to junior faculty.  

Warren D. Taylor, M.D., MHSc, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Investigator in the Vanderbilt Center for Cognitive Medicine, was one of several authors of the recently published article "Effects of early life stress on depression, cognitive performance, and brain morphology." The article appears in the journal Psychological Medicine. Click here to view the abstract.

Edwin Williamson, M.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, recently started a new position at Vanderbilt, Faculty Head of House for the Hank Ingram House on the Martha Ingram Commons. As Faculty Head of House, Dr. Williamson will reside at the house with his family and 295 first-year students. His role consists of helping make their first year experience as intellectually stimulating and enjoyable as possible. 

Two current studies by Blythe Corbett, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Psychology, and Kale Edmiston, Ph.D., a recent Vanderbilt Neuroscience graduate, highlight atypical physiological responses to social evaluative threat in adolescents with autism.  In a study published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorder, male adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) showed differences in Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (a measure of the parasympathetic nervous system) indicating autonomic dysregulation.

Department of Psychiatry faculty members Blythe Corbett, Ph.D., and Kevin Sanders, M.D., and collaborators recently published findings from a double-blind, placebo-controlled study comparing the regulation of hormones implicated in the neuropathology of autism; namely oxytocin (OT) and cortisol.

Katherine Gotham, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, was published recently in two peer-mediated journals.