Stephan F Taylor M.D.
| University Hospital 9D Box 0118 |
| Ann Arbor, MI 48109 |
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My research focuses on the neuroanatomy of emotion and the pathophysiology of abnormal emotion in psychosis, depression and anxiety disorders. This work has been carried out with tools provided by neuroimaging (PET and functional MRI) and event-related potentials (ERP collaborating with William Gehring). I co-direct the Psychiatric Affective Neuroimaging Laboratory, in collaboration with Israel Liberzon. While this work is ultimately directed at understanding psychiatric disorders, important groundwork begins with investigations directed at normal physiology relevant to psychiatric illness, with a specific focus on the role of the amygdala, sublenticular region and the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex in processing emotionally salient stimuli. Another interest concerns the interaction between cognition and emotion, an area of central importance for psychiatric illness. For example, the modulation of cortical regions devoted to object recognition by emotional content is an example of the intertwined nature of cognitive and emotional processing. Significant findings suggest that psychosis may involve a dysfunction in limbic brain regions that normally evaluate the emotional salience of stimuli, and this dysfunction likely entails abnormal interaction of limbic/emotional areas with prefrontal/cognitive areas. My work is actively engaged in testing these hypotheses with behavioral probes designed to evaluate dysfunction in persons with schizophrenia, as well as other psychiatric disorders, such as obsessive compulsive disorder.
The translation of our functional anatomic knowledge of psychiatric disorders may be accomplished by device-related neuromodulation. As co-director of the Psychiatric Neuromodulation Program (with Parag Patil of the Department of Neurosurgery), I am interested in using tools such as transcranial magnetic stimulation to probe brain function and treat disorders such as depression. Using deep brain stimulation, we are also engaged in a multi-disciplinary effort to treat refractory depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.
Taylor SF, Welsh RC, Wager TD, Phan KL, Fitzgerald KD, Gehring WJ, A functional neuroimaging study of motivation and executive function, NeuroImage, 21:1045-1054, 2004
Fitzgerald KD, Welsh RC, Gehring WJ, Abelson J, Himle J, Liberzon I, Taylor SF, Error-related hyperactivity of the anterior cingulate cortex in obsessive compulsive disorder, Biological Psychiatry, 57:287-294, 2005
Phan KL, Taylor SF, Welsh RC, Ho S-H, Britton JC, Liberzon I, Neural correlates of emotional salience: a trial-based fMRI study, NeuroImage, 21:768-780, 2004
Taylor SF, Phan KL, Britton JC, Liberzon I, Neural response to emotional salience in schizophrenia, Neuropsychopharmacology, 30:984-995, 2005
Taylor SF, Phan KL, Decker LR, Liberzon I, Subjective rating of emotionally salient stimuli modulates neural activity, NeuroImage,18:650-659, 2003
Abelson JL, Curtis GC, Sagher O, Albucher RC, Harrigan M, Taylor SF, Martis B, Giordani B, Deep brain stimulation for refractory obsessive compulsive disorder, Biological Psychiatry, 57:510-516, 2005
Phan KL, Wager TD, Taylor SF, Liberzon I, Functional neuroanatomy of emotion: A meta-analysis of emotion induction studies in PET and fMRI, NeuroImage, 16:331-348, 2002
Liberzon I, Zubieta JK, Fig LM, Phan KL, Koeppe RA, Taylor SF, Mu-opioid receptors and limbic responses to aversive emotional stimuli, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99:7084-7089, 2002
Taylor SF, Martis B, Welsh RC, Fitzgerald KD, Liberzon I, Abelson JL, Himle JA, Gehring WJ, Medial frontal cortex activity and loss-related responses to errors, Journal of Neuroscience, 26:4063-4070, 2006
Taylor SF, Kornblum S, Lauber EJ, Minoshima S, Koeppe RA: Isolation of specific interference processing in the Stroop task: PET activation studies, NeuroImage, 6:81-92, 1997
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