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CONCEPT Lab
Connecting Outcomes, Networks & Cognition for Early Psychosis Therapeutics (CONCEPT) lab conducts advanced clinical-translational research to gain insights into the brain network characteristics associated with schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders and risk for developing psychosis with the goal of finding novel treatment approaches. CONCEPT lab invites you to collaborate with us and participate in our research studies. Check out our studies today!
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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.
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Data Analysis & Academic Research
High-field strength MRIs provide very detailed images. The unit of magnetic field strength, Tesla (T), refers to the static magnetic field in the MRI. We use high field-strength (7T) MRI in our studies. Data analyses of these images often involves computationally intensive signal processing steps used to generate the brain connectomes (wiring diagrams) and brain atlases (3D maps of brain areas).
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.