Jill M. Goldstein, Ph.D.

Jill M. Goldstein, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of Research at the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). Dr. Goldstein also serves as Director of Research on Gender Neurobiology and Women’s Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry at BWH. 

As a clinical neuroscientist with doctoral training in psychiatric epidemiology and psychopathology at Columbia University, and post-doctoral training in clinical neuroscience and brain imaging at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Goldstein is an internationally recognized expert in understanding sex differences in health and diseases associated with the central nervous system. Specifically, Dr. Goldstein’s investigations have focused on characterizing sex differences in the development and adult functioning of the human brain and how these differences contribute to understanding sex differences in psychiatric and neurologic disorders and their comorbidity with general medical disorders.

Her program of research, called the Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory of Sex Differences in the Brain (http://cnl-sd.bwh.harvard.edu) consists of an interdisciplinary team of investigators, integrating structural and functional brain imaging studies, psychophysiology, neuroendocrine studies of hormones and brain function, genetics, inflammatory factors, and collaborative efforts with animal investigators studying genes, hormones, inflammation and the brain (http://mddscor.bwh.harvard.edu).  Brain circuitries under current investigation include the stress response circuitry, memory and working memory (including brain aging), and reward circuitry implicated in the neural control of obesity.  This work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health for nearly 30 years. She has published over 120 articles, chapters and other original and peer-reviewed work in these areas. 

Dr. Goldstein is also an administrative and educational leader in women’s health and sex differences in medicine, locally and nationally. At BWH, she has built a unique research infrastructure to foster collaborative efforts to understand mechanisms that explain sex differences in health and disease across disciplines and methods of study. She also is the Principal Investigator of a Harvard-wide junior faculty training program on building interdisciplinary careers in women’s health called, “Hormones and Genes in Women’s Health:  From Bench to Bedside” and is committed to training the next generation in this arena in medicine.  

 Examples of Recent Publications:

Goldstein, JM, Seidman, LJ, Horton, NJ, Makris, N, Kennedy, DN, Caviness, VS, Faraone, SV, Tsuang, MT. Normal sexual dimorphism of the adult human brain assessed by in-vivo magnetic resonance imaging. Cerebral Cortex, 2001; 11:490-497.

Goldstein, JM, Seidman, LJ, O'Brien, LM, Horton, NJ, Kennedy, DN, Makris, N, Caviness, VS, Faraone, SV, Tsuang MT. Impact of normal sexual dimorphisms on sex differences in structural brain abnormalities in schizophrenia assessed by magnetic resonance imaging. Archives of General Psychiatry, 2002; 59:154-164.

Goldstein JM, Jerram MW, Poldrack R, Ahern T, Kennedy DN, Seidman LJ, Makris N. Hormonal cycle modulates arousal circuitry in women using fMRI. Journal of Neuroscience, 2005; 25:9309-9316.

Goldstein, JM, Seidman, JL, Makris, N, Ahern, T, O'Brien, LM, Caviness, VS, Kennedy, DN, Faraone, SV, Tsuang, MT. Hypothalamic abnormalities in schizophrenia: Sex effects and genetic vulnerability. Biological Psychiatry, 2007; 61:935-945.

Goldstein, JM, Buka, S, Seidman, LJ, Tsuang, MT. Specificity of the transmission of schizophrenia psychosis spectrum and affective psychoses in the New England Family Studies high risk design. Archives of General Psychiatry, May 2010; 67: 458-467.

Goldstein, JM, Jerram, M, Abbs, B, Whitfield-Gabrieli, S, Makris, N. Sex differences in stress response circuitry activation dependent on female hormonal cycle. Journal of Neuroscience, 2010; 30 (2): 431-438.

Links:
Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (BIRCWH)

Clinical Neuroscience Lab of Sex Differences in the Brain

Connors-BRI Center for Research on Women's Health & Gender Biology

Harvard Medical School, Department of Psychiatry

Specialized Center of Research on Sex Differences in Depression (SCOR)

Contact Information
Jill M. Goldstein, Ph.D.
Brigham and Women's Hospital
One Brigham Circle, OBC-3-34R
1620 Tremont Street
Boston, MA 02120
email:  jill_goldstein@hms.harvard.edu

 assistant: Abby Brockman at abrockman@partners.org