# CSR&D Research Career Scientist Award Application

> **NIH VA IK6** · JAMES J PETERS VA  MEDICAL CENTER · 2020 · —

## Abstract

Schizophrenia spectrum disorders and suicidal behavior are major public health problems affecting
Veterans. Each year, the VA provides care to approximately 100,000 schizophrenia patients, accounting for
nearly 12% of the VA’s total healthcare costs. At the same time, recent studies indicate that Veterans exhibit
higher suicide risk compared with the general U.S. population. The PI’s ongoing clinical cognitive neuroscience
research at the VA uses neuroimaging and psychophysiological approaches and primarily focuses on these
two areas: elucidating the neurobiology of schizophrenia and suicidal behavior. Identification of promising new
targets for intervention in schizophrenia and suicide prevention are critically important goals of the VA. The PI’s
track record of federal funding and peer-reviewed publications in these two areas has helped advance the field.
 The PI’s new VA CSR&D Merit Award aims to identify the neural correlates and psychophysiology of normal
emotional reactivity and regulation in healthy control Veterans and pathological severity of emotion
dysregulation in Veterans with major depressive disorder (MDD) at low (non-suicidal psychiatric controls) and
high-risk (suicidal ideators and suicide attempters) for suicide. Participants receive baseline functional MRI
scans and a psychophysiological paradigm that provides a reliable, non-verbal, low-cost measure of emotion
processing (i.e. affective startle modulation). The psychophysiology session is repeated at a 6-month follow-up;
clinical symptom assessments are done at baseline, 6-, and 12-month follow-up. Understanding brain circuitry
anomalies underlying dysregulated emotional expression and psychological mediators that give rise to and
predict suicidal behavior and distinguish between ideators and attempters has clear public health importance.
This newly-funded VA Merit study promises to help uncover the mechanisms by which biological and
psychological factors give rise to suicidal behavior and may aid in prospectively identifying Veterans at greatest
risk for suicide.
 The goal of the PI’s current schizophrenia-spectrum research (funded by her previous VA CSR&D Merit
Award) is to begin to translate pre-clinical scientific research in schizophrenia into the clinical arena. In order to
identify promising new targets for intervention in schizophrenia, a better understanding of its pathological
circuitry and underlying genetic susceptibilities is required. Her work uses diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and
structural MRI to characterize white matter abnormalities in frontal-temporal regions. DTI fiber tractography
allows quantification of the integrity of white matter connectivity in the brain. Various susceptibility genes are
implicated in white matter abnormalities and schizophrenia (e.g., NRG1 and ERBB4). Together with her
multidisciplinary VA-Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) colleagues who bring expertise in
genetics, the PI’s work investigates a model of white matte...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9892965
- **Project number:** 5IK6CX001738-03
- **Recipient organization:** JAMES J PETERS VA  MEDICAL CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** ERIN A. HAZLETT
- **Activity code:** IK6 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-04-01 → 2023-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9892965

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9892965, CSR&D Research Career Scientist Award Application (5IK6CX001738-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9892965. Licensed CC0.

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