Effects of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Social Cognition, Cognitive Processing, and Functional Brain Architecture in Psychopathy

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT This NIMH Career Development Award will support Dr. Drew Winters at the University of Colorado School of Medicine to conduct a trial focusing on transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for intervention development in psychopathy. Dr. Winters will enroll adults ages 18-60 years (n=60) with psychopathy to test whether inhibitory TMS to the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and excitatory TMS the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) can improve social cognition (Aim 1), cognitive processing (Aim 2) and functional brain architecture (Aim 3). The career development plan supports the research aims and includes these training goals: 1) Develop expertise in TMS as a research tool; 2) Develop expertise in randomized controlled trial (RCT) design, implementation and analyses; 3) Develop expertise in analysis of brain data from TMS experiments to make causal inferences; 4) Develop expertise in psychopathic mechanisms. His mentors, Drs. Sakai, Mikulich, Oathes, and Waller are recognized experts in TMS, neuroimaging, statistics, clinical trials, advanced computational methods and causal inference with brain data, as well as psychopathy. The training plan and research protocol proposed under this career development award would provide the needed experiences, skill development and pilot data to help to launch Dr. Winters’ career as an independent scientist focusing on the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition, cognitive processing, and functional brain architecture implicated in psychopathy and antisocial phenotypes, along with novel treatment development.