Interdisciplinary and Statistical Methodology work in Psychiatry

Through my role as a senior faculty consultant in SIStat, the biostatistics core at UCLA Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior, I collaborate on a wide range of research projects on autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ADHD, major depressive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder and social cognition in HIV.

My collaborative work in this area has also motivated a new line of research in statistical methodology. Motivated with a study conducted at UCLA by our collaborator Dr. Jeste (Jeste et al., 2014) on neural correlates of implicit learning in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), in this new line of research we model longitudinal trends in event-related potentials (ERP) studies (Hasenstab et al., 2014). Both spontaneous EEG and ERP, which represent EEG recorded in response to stimuli, are noninvasive methods with very high time resolution. Brain response to sensory stimuli is very small (e.g., few microvolts) compared to spontaneous EEG, yielding a low signal-to-noise ratio in ERP studies. To cope with this well-known phenomenon, stimuli is repeatedly and ERP signal is averaged for each subject over these repetitions to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio. We propose a preprocessing step based on a moving average in time to restore the longitudinal information in ERP studies and propose a new longitudinal functional data framework that is applicable not only to ERP studies but to complex biomedical data more generally; examples include data acquired in the form of high frequency functional data recorded over several visits or in the setting of medium to long periods of intensive physiological monitoring.

  • Jalbrzikowski, M., Carter, C., Senturk, D., Chow, C., Hopkins, J. L., Green, M. F., Galvan, A., Cannon, T. D. and Bearden, C. E. (2013) Social cognition in 22q11.2 microdeletion syndrome: Relevance to psychosis? Schizophrenia Research, 142: 99-107.
  • Golembo, S. S., Bachman, P., Senturk, D., Cannon, T., Bearden, C. E. (2013) Youth-caregiver agreement on clinical high-risk symptoms of psychosis. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 42(4): 649-658.
  • Jalbrzikowski, M., Jonas, R., Senturk, D., Patel, A., Chow, C., Green, M. F., Bearden, C. E. (2013) Structural abnormalities in cortical volume, thickness, and surface area in 22q11.2 microdeletion syndrome: relationship with psychotic symptoms. NeuroImage:Clinical, 3: 405-415.
  • Davis, M. C., Green, M. F., Lee, J., Horan, W. P., Senturk, D., Clarke, A. D. and Marder, S. R. (2014) Oxytocin-Augmented Social Cognitive Skills Training in Schizophrenia. Neuropsychopharmacology, in press.
  • Jeste, S. S., Kirkham, N., Senturk, D., Hasenstab, K., Sugar, C., Kupelian, C., Baker, E., Sanders, A., Shimizu, C., Norona, A., McEvoy, K., Paparella, T., Freeman, S. F. N. and Johnson, S. P. (2014) Neural correlates of visual statistical learning in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Developmental Science, in press.
  • Kasari, C., Lawton, K., Shih, W., Landa, R., Carson, T., Lord, C., Orlich, F., King, B., Wetherby, A. and Senturk, D. (2014) Caregiver-mediated intervention for low-resourced preschoolers with autism: An RCT. Pediatrics, in press.
  • Jeste, S. S., Wu, J. Y., Senturk, D., Varcin, K., Ko, J., McCarthy, B., Shimizu, C., Diees, K., Farley, V. V., Shain, M. and Nelson, C. A. (2014) Early cognitive and developmental trajectories are associated with ASD in infants with Tuberous Sclerosis Complex. Neurology, in press.
  • Altieri, S. C., Yang, H., O’Brien, H. J., Redwine, H. M., Senturk, D., Hensler, J., Andrews, A. M. (2014) Perinatal vs. genetic programming of serotonin states associated with anxiety. Biological Psychiatry.
  • Gilman, T. L., Ramos, D. J., Desai, D., Amin, S., Ye, M., Jung, M., Senturk, D., Vrana, K. E. and Andrews, A. M. (2014) Comparison of two tryptophan hydroxylase inhibitors in adult and postnatal mice. International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.
  • Hasenstab, K., Sugar, C., Telesca, D., McEvoy, K., Jeste, S. and Senturk, D. (2014) Identifying longitudinal trends within EEG experiments. Biometrics, under revision.
  • McEvoy, K., Hasenstab, K., Senturk, D., Jeste, S. (2014) Effects of physiological artifacts on EEG power measurements in children. Brain Imaging and Behavior.
  • Lavretsky, H., Reinlieb, M., Siddarth, P., Senturk, D., Ercoli, L. M., Cyr, N. S. (2014) Combined citalopram and methylphenidate lead to enhanced treatment response than either treatment alone in geriatric depression: a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trial American Journal of Psychiatry.
  • Sautter, F., Glynn, S., Cretu, A. and Senturk, D. (2014) Efficacy of structured approach therapy in reducing PTSD in returning veterans: A randomized clinical trial.
  • Jalbrzikowski, M., Villalon, J., Karlsgodt, K. K., Senturk, D., Chow, C., Thompson, P., Bearden, C. E. (2014) White matter microstructure abnormalities in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome: relationship with social cognition and psychotic symptoms. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.