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CONCEPT Lab
Connecting Outcomes, Networks & Cognition for Early Psychosis Therapeutics (CONCEPT) lab conducts clinical-translational research to gain insights into the brain network characteristics associated with psychotic disorders and risk for developing schizophrenia, with the goal of finding novel treatment approaches. CONCEPT lab invites you to collaborate with us and participate in our research studies.
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Community Engagement and Scientific Leadership
Our lab actively engages the scientific and local mental health communities through leadership roles at major conferences, collaborative scholarship, community study participation, and public-facing presentations that advance understanding of serious mental illness. Dr. Prasad treats patients UPMC and leads research the University of Pittsburgh.
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Clinical Psychiatry and MRI
We are an interdisciplinary group affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Departments of Psychiatry and Bioengineering, UPMC's Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, as well as the Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS). We also collaborate with research groups to support diverse strategies using 7T MRI data.
What we do
We operate out of UPMC WPIC (Pittsburgh, PA) in the heart of Pittsburgh's oldest behavioral health center. At the University of Pittsburgh Dr. Prasad holds dual appointments in the psychiatry and engineering departments. For veterans studies we collaborate with the Pittsburgh Health System VA.
We work closely with the Pittsburgh 7 Tesla Radio Frequency Lab to acquire ultra-high field high-resolution multimodal MRI data. The modalities include T1w, T2w, diffusion weighted imaging including NODDI, functional MRI, susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) and multinuclear spectroscopy (1H and 31P).
High resolution data, large sample sizes, and multimodal MRI acquisitions mean long- and more complex- data processing methods and advanced analytical approaches. We house several high-end workstations and a cluster computer in our lab. We have access to the supercomputing resources like Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) and University of Pittsburgh's Center for Research Computing to enable high-throughput data processing and analysis, including extensive ongoing mathematical modeling research.