Joseph John Mann, MD

I study the neurobiology of mood disorders and its relationship to the action of antidepressants. I study the neurobiology of suicidal behavior and how it can be prevented. My research employs multimodal brain imaging that includes MRI and PET scanning, and genomics to understand cause and resilience and thereby improve treatment and prevention.

Current projects include:

· We are studying inflammatory and stressor antecedents of suicidal behavior employing new PET tracers that quantify key proteins involved in neuroinflammation that we link to measures of peripheral inflammation, ecological momentary assessment to assess emotion and responses to stressors in everyday life, passive continuous device monitoring and a new Trier Social Stress Test that includes adrenergic response index and assaying effect of sterile stress on immune response. We study depressed patients and healthy volunteers and examine relationships of the biologic indices to psychopathology

· A close collaboration exists with the CUMC Kreitchman PET Center in terms of new tracer development including tracers for microtubules, neuroinflammation and synapse density with PET in vivo and in vitro in postmortem brain samples. MIND chemists and PET tracer modelers/statisticians in MIND work with the PET Center to develop first in man PET tracers.

· Expand mechanistic studies of ketamine’s antidepressant mechanisms of actions using multimodal MRI and PET and collaborating with colleagues for translational mouse studies.

· Human postmortem brain studies looking at genetic, epigenetic and expression associations with depression, suicide and antidepressant treatment.

· Developed new methods using EMA, neuroinflammation, peripheral inflammation and in vivo cortical mitochondrial function and other indices to study imminent risk in suicidal patients.