From left: Erin Hazlett, PhD, Philip Szeszko, PhD, and Marianne Goodman, MD.
In August, Marianne Goodman, MD, Erin Hazlett, PhD, and Philip Szeszko, PhD, all faculty staff at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center (JJPVAMC) in the Bronx and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, were awarded two new grants in suicide prevention.
Drs. Goodman and Hazlett are the principal investigators on a study entitled “CTBI: Traumatic brain injury-induced inflammation effects on cognitive evaluations and response inhibition: Mechanisms of increased risk for suicidality.” This Collaborative MERIT Award involves a three-site study that will use the new 3T MRI scanner at the JJPVAMC to examine brain activation during impulsivity tasks in veterans with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) with and without suicide attempts. A VA site in New Jersey will do similar work using an animal model of mTBI, and a VA site in Indianapolis will examine impulsivity and inflammatory biomarkers in the same groups of veterans as the JJPVAMC.
Dr. Szeszko is the Principal Investigator on a study entitled “Predicting suicidal behavior in veterans with bipolar disorder using behavioral and neuroimaging based impulsivity phenotypes.” He will investigate two neural circuits tapping state measures of rapid response inhibition and choice impulsivity, respectively, using functional magnetic resonance imaging to predict suicidal behavior longitudinally over one year in veterans with bipolar disorder. This study will also investigate novel measures of crossing white matter fiber arrangement comprising these circuits and their relationship to impulsivity.
These renewable grants are known as VA MERIT Awards and provide funding for four years. Drs. Goodman and Hazlett also have three other suicide prevention MERIT awards, bringing the current portfolio of grants focusing on suicide prevention at the JJPVAMC to a total of four.
“We are thrilled that our neuroimaging research program is thriving in terms of its focus on the neurobiology of suicidal behavior,” said Dr. Hazlett, research career scientist at the JJPVAMC. These studies received initial support from the JJPVAMC’s Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center, Mental Health Patient Care Center, and Erik Langhoff, MD, PhD, director of the JJPVAMC.