Spring 2008

Jon Abramowitz and Colleagues Publish the Clinical Handbook of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Related Problems

"In this handbook, Jonathan S. Abramowitz, Dean McKay, and Steven Taylor present an approach to diagnosis and treatment that considers subtype and spectrum concepts. They examine specific presentations of OCD - the symptoms - that are often seen in practice as well as the many disorders that may fall within the OCD spectrum....The only work on OCD that covers treatment options for specific symptoms and the full spectrum of related disorders, this handbook is a must-have for clinicians who are dedicated to improving the lives of patients with these challenging mental conditions."

Excerpt from back cover of Clinical Handbook of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Related Problems

Lawrence Sanna, Patrick Curran and Andrea Hussong Named Fellows of the Association for Psychological Science

Lawrence Sanna, Professor and Director of the Social Program, Patrick Curran, Professor in the Quantitative program, and Andrea Hussong, Professor in the Clinical Program, were recently named Fellows of the Association for Psychological Science. 

To view the website, visit:
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/fellows/index.cfm

Jon Abramowitz Featured in Endeavors for His Research on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Jon Abramowitz, Associate Professor in the Clinical Program and Associate Chair of the Department, was featured in the Winter 2008 edition of UNC's Endeavors magazine.

To view the Endeavors artice visit:

http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/win2008/ocd.php

Barbara Fredrickson Featured in Endeavors for Her Research on Emotion

Barbara Fredrickson, Kenan Distinguished Professor in the Social Psychology Program, was featured in the Winter 2008 edition of UNC's Endeavors magazine.

To view the Endeavors article visit:
http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/win2008/fredrickson.php

Charlotte Boettiger Featured in The News & Observer and in the Journal of Neuroscience for Her Research on Addiction

Charlotte Boettiger, Assistant Professior in Behavioral Neuroscience, was featured December 26, 2007 in The News & Observer article "Wiring, not weakness, may cause addicts to relaps." Boettiger and colleagues were also published in the December issue of the Journal of Neuroscience for this same research.

To view The News & Observer article visit:

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/847752.html

To view the Journal of Neuroscience article, click here.

Fall 2007

Keith Payne Ranked in the APS Observer as One of the Top 20 Rising Stars in Psychology

Keith Payne, Assistant Professor in the Social Psychology Program, was profiled this month in the APS Observer as one of 20 "rising stars" in psychology.

To view the article visit:

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2252#keith

David Penn and Eric Youngstrom Listed as "Top Producers" in the Journal of Clinical Psychology

David Penn, Professor and Associate Driector of the Clinical Psychology Program, and Eric Youngstrom, Assocaite Professor in the Clinical Psychology Program, are listed in the Journal of Clinical Psychology (December 2007) article "Top Producers of Scholarly Publications in Clinical Psychology Ph.D. Programs." The article lists the top producers of scholarly publications by faculty in Departments of Psychology between 2000 and 2004. Of the 1927 faculty examined across the country, David Penn ranked #33 for total publications and #55 for peer reviewed publications. Eric Youngstrom ranks #36 for total publications and #36 for peer reviewed publications.

To view the article, click here.

David Penn and David Roberts Featured in The New Yorker and ABCnews.com

David Roberts, a Clinical Psychology graduate student, along with advisor David Penn, Professor and Associate Director of the Clinical Psychology Program, are featured in The New Yorker artice We Are All Larry David by Jacob Ward. Ward discusses the research Roberts and Penn are currently conducting regarding schizophrenic patients and their response to television clips as it relates to their social behavior. Roberts and Penn began to formalize these findings, mapping out a teachable technique called Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) that has been adopted by practitioners in Germany, Portugal, and China. SCIT is also featured in the abcnews.com article New Non-DrugTherapy Promising for People with Schizophrenia by Christina Caron. To view either article, clink on the appropriate link below.

To view The New Yorker article visit:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/10/29/071029ta_talk_ward

To view the abcnews.com artice visit:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=3821436&page=1

Thiele Laboratory Neuropeptide Research Reveals Therapeutic Targets for Alcoholsim

Todd Thiele, Associate Professor in Behavioral Neurosicence and Director of Research Services, and colleagues are featured in Center Line, the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies newsletter, for work on neuropeptide research that has revealed therapudic targets for alcoholsim.

To view artice, click here.

Regina Carelli and Colleagues Publish in Nature Neuroscience

It has been proposed that the innervation of the nucleus accumbens by midbrain dopamine neurons provides instructive information enabling prediction of whether a given stimuli will result in a rewarding outcome.  In the August 2007, Vol 10, No 8 issue of Nature Neuroscience, Day et al., report the dynamics of dopamine release at high temporal resolution in the nucleus accumbens in rats learning to associate a stimulus with a reward.  Rats were trained to associate the extension of a lever with the delivery 10 s later of a sucrose pellet. Dopamine release was monitored in ‘real time’ by electrochemical recording with high spatial resolution.  Early during conditioning, before the association between the stimuli and reward had been established, dopamine release peaked when animals obtained a reward. However this pattern shifted later during training such that the peak in dopamine release came at the time of the presentation of the predictive stimulus and not the reward.  These findings

reveal that the timing of the reward signal provided by dopamine is dynamically regulated by associative learning.  Jeremy Day, a Biological Psychology graduate student in the Carelli lab, is the first author of this article. This work was completed in collaboration with Dr. R. Mark Wightman, a W. R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Chemistry at UNC.

To view the atricle visit:

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v10/n8/pdf/nn1923.pdf