Emily R. Stern, PhD

My research uses a multi-method approach to identify and target behavioral and neural mechanisms in psychiatric disorders, focusing on heterogeneity in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and transdiagnostic features shared with other disorders. The lab’s work seeks to understand the fundamental problem of variability of treatment efficacy among patients with the same diagnosis by employing a program of research to: 1) identify behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying core processes contributing to within-disorder heterogeneity and 2) target those mechanisms using techniques to manipulate neural circuit functioning. Primarily focusing on the clinically impairing but understudied sensory processing abnormalities in OCD, research in my lab has linked sensory symptoms to hyper-functioning of an insula-sensorimotor circuit and is testing the use of pharmacotherapeutic (e.g., the 5-HT3 antagonist ondansetron) and neuromodulatory (e.g., TMS) methods to modulate this circuitry in order to alter behavior and, ultimately, clinical symptoms. The overall aim of this work is to use mechanistic findings to develop and refine treatments targeting individual patient characteristics within the framework of a personalized medicine approach.