Avram Holmes

Research in my laboratory is focused on characterizing the biological processes that underlie diseases and disorders of the brain and central nervous system, with an emphasis on affective and psychotic illnesses such as unipolar depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. A core motivation driving this work is the search for network-level signatures, or “fingerprints”, that co-vary with heritable behavioral variation in the general population and mark vulnerability for illness onset. In pursuit of this goal, current laboratory projects encompass three complementary domains which aim to: (1) characterize the fundamental rules that govern the development, organization, and function of large-scale brain networks; (2) establish reliable links between genetic variation, system-level brain function, and behavior in the general population; and (3) explore associations between disturbed network organization and clinical presentation in psychiatric illness. I have extensive experience with the design and conduct of psychiatric neuroimaging studies, including work examining both behavioral and neuroimaging intermediate phenotypes and the development and application of multiscale, biologically interpretable, brain-based predictive models. Supporting this program of research, our study team was recently awarded an ML/AI Pilot Seed Grant from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research at Rutgers University.