Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Psychophysiology Research Lab
Overview
The Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Psychophysiology Research Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital is comprised of two collaborating laboratories with a combined research focus on the psychophysiological and neuroimaging underpinnings of PTSD.
Research Teams
The research conducted at the PTSD Psychophysiology Research Laboratory seeks to understand the causes of PTSD, effective treatments, and preventative measures that can be employed to prevent its occurrence. Our collaborating laboratories include:
Postpartum Traumatic Stress Disorders Research Program (Dekel Lab) (PI: Sharon Dekel, PhD). The Dekel Laboratory studies women’s mental health following the landmark event of childbirth, including traumatic childbirth, and the mechanisms responsible for postpartum adjustment. Current studies include defining postpartum PTSD and its implications for maternal wellness and child development; preventing childbirth-related PTSD via expressive writing; preventing postpartum depression using oxytocin; and global initiatives studying maternal mental health in Israel and Nigeria.
Home Base Research Program (PI: Kaloyan Tanev, MD). The Home Base Research Program has multiple active studies recruiting among veterans, active duty servicemembers, and civilians, for individuals with PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and healthy controls. Studies involve combined medication and therapeutic interventions for PTSD, electroencephalography (EEG), polysomnography (PSG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the measurement of electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate variability (HRV), and the use of wearable technology to track psychophysiological, neurophysiological, biomarkers, and other biological signs of PTSD and TBI.
Research Team
Sharon Dekel, PhD | Co-Director
Dr. Sharon Dekel is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Director of the Postpartum Traumatic Stress Disorders Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Dekel Lab at HMS and MGH. She earned a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University and completed her clinical internship training at Columbia Medical Center followed by a research postdoctoral fellowship in a leading international Trauma lab. Dr. Dekel is also a licensed clinical psychologist.
Dr. Dekel has been studying biological and psychological factors associated with ways of coping with stressful events. Her work on the positive outlook of traumatic stress is considered pioneering in the field. Rather than viewing trauma outcomes as exclusively negative, her studies have increased our understanding of the human capacity to thrive in the wake of trauma.
Since joining Massachusetts General Hospital in 2013, Dr. Dekel has expanded her research with the investigation of childbirth as a potentially traumatic event (see Dr. Dekel's publication record). This represents a new frontier in trauma studies. She developed a multidisciplinary research model involving both the Mass General Psychiatric and OB/GYN Departments that has allowed her to study over 8,000 postpartum women. Dr. Dekel is defining the overlooked condition of childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder (CB-PTSD) and working to better understand the transmission of the disorder’s effects to the offspring. By studying childbirth as a model of traumatic stress, she hopes to translate the knowledge gained to improve clinical care of trauma-exposed individuals.
Dr. Dekel has also been honored for her exceptional mentorship: She was awarded the 2025 Harvard Medical School's Joint Committee on the Status of Women (JCSW) Shirley Driscoll Dean’s Leadership Award for the Enhancement of Women’s Careers, and she was named the recipient of the 2025 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) Distinguished Mentorship Award.
Dr. Dekel is a two-time recipient of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation’s Young Investigator Award, the MGH’s Executive Committee On Research ISF funding, and the Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Faculty Award. She also received Mass General’s Claflin Distinguished Scholar Award for Women in Science, and is a recent recipient of Postpartum Support International Susan A. Hickman Memorial Research Award for excellence in scientific work on postpartum mental health. She has been continually supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Dekel is on the Editorial Boards of PLOS ONE, Archive of Women’s Mental Health, the Annals of Depression and Anxiety, Frontiers in Psychiatry, Frontiers in Psychology, where she edited a special volume on childbirth-related PTSD, and the journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, the American Psychological Association’s leading traumatic stress journal. Dr. Dekel serves on the Board of the International Marcé Society, the largest organization supporting perinatal mental health. She is also the founding Chair of the Postpartum Trauma Special Interest Group of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies, which is the largest professional organization in the field.
Kaloyan Tanev, MD | Co-Director
Dr. Tanev is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and his main area of interest is neuropsychiatry. He earned his MD at the High Medical Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria, his general psychiatry residency at Brown University, and his Neuropsychiatry fellowship at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Currently, Dr. Tanev serves as the Chief Medical Office and Chief Scientific Officer at Home Base. He is also the Medical Director of the MGH TBI Clinical and Research Program and the Director of MGH Clinical Neuropsychiatry Research.
Since joining MGH in 2008, Dr. Tanev completed a NIMH career development award (K-23) in 2018 focusing on whether cognitive performance, MRI, and DTI brain changes can predict the response to cognitive behavioral therapy in military service members and veterans with PTSD and comorbid mild traumatic brain injury. He has served as PI for clinical research involving sleep disturbances in hospitalized patients with dementia, as site PI for multisite studies of Huntington’s Disease, and as co-I on multiple other projects. Additionally, he has served as PI on multiple projects involving PTSD, TBI, and depression. His recent interests include the biological signatures of PTSD, neuropsychiatric presentations of TBI, and testing novel treatments for PTSD and TBI.
Home Base is a national nonprofit dedicated to healing the invisible wounds of war for Veterans of all eras, Service Members, Military Families and Families of the Fallen through world-class, direct clinical care, wellness, education and research – all at no cost to them – regardless of era of service, discharge status or geographical location. The program was founded by Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston Red Sox.
Since 2009, Home Base has served more than 50,000 Veterans and their Family Members and trained over 85,000 clinicians across the nation, and we remain at the forefront of discovering new treatments to ensure a brighter future for Warriors and their Families.
Tal Elhasid Felsenstein, MD | Postdoctoral Fellow
Tal Elhasid Felsenstein, MD, is an Israeli physician and research fellow in the Dekel Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She completed her medical education and clinical internship at Tel Aviv University. During her studies, she contributed to psychiatric research across several domains, including large-scale projects on schizophrenia and on the relationship between cognitive performance and psychiatric symptoms in female adolescents.
While training in medicine, she became fascinated by the stories and experiences of women navigating pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period. This interest led her to pursue a qualification as a lactation consultant, reflecting her commitment to supporting maternal and infant wellbeing through both clinical and scientific work.
At the Dekel Lab, her research focuses on finding novel biological mechanisms by which peripartum maternal stress and trauma may shape infant development. She plans to pursue a residency in psychiatry, with a particular focus on women’s mental health.
Maya Zegel, PhD | Postdoctoral Fellow
Maya has charted a clinical research career exploring mechanisms that underlie trauma/PTSD and substance use. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Boston University, Maya worked at McLean Hospital where she was responsible for multiple neuroimaging studies focused on substance use. Maya then earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Houston, after completing a predoctoral internship specializing in addictive behaviors at the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans’ Hospital in Bedford, MA. Throughout her clinical training, Maya has worked in unique settings including the Houston Fire Department, the McLean Hospital LEADER (Law Enforcement, Active Duty, Emergency Responder) Program, and multiple VA residential programs for substance use. She has experience treating substance use and trauma-related disorders using evidence-based protocols (i.e., ACT, CPT, CBT-SUD). Most recently, Maya worked as an Interprofessional Advanced Addictions Fellow within the VA Boston Healthcare System before joining Home Base as a Research Scientist Fellow.
Scott P. Orr, PhD | Emeritus Founding Director
Dr. Scott Orr is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School and a recipient of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies’ Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in the Field of Traumatic Stress. Over the past 40+ years, he has conducted innovative research on the psychobiology of anxiety and PTSD using psychophysiological, electrophysiological and neuroimaging methods. He has successfully administered and collaborated extensively on research projects as a PI, Co-Investigator and Consultant. His funded research experience includes multiple clinical trials investigating the efficacy of pharmacological and behavioral interventions targeting memory consolidation and reconsolidation blockade in PTSD. Dr. Orr has served as a mentor and consultant at the local, national, and international levels, providing hands-on training for the next generation of investigators in research methodology, data analysis, and psychophysiological techniques.
Roger K. Pitman, MD | Emeritus Founding Director
Dr. Roger Pitman is a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. He served as a psychiatrist in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam era and went on to complete a 30-year career in the Department of Veterans Affairs prior to moving to MGH. He is the recipient of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies’ Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in the field of PTSD and its Lifetime Achievement Award.
Dr. Pitman’s research into the psychobiology of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) spans more than 25 years. He has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications on PTSD and more than 200 overall publications in the general psychiatric and medical literature. He has authored or co-authored numerous structural and functional neuroimaging studies of PTSD. For the past 12 years, he has been conducting a large-scale, psychobiologic investigation of a national sample of monozygotic twins discordant for combat exposure in Vietnam.
His current major research interest is whether medications administered at the time of traumatic memory reactivation can weaken traumatic memories through reconsolidation blockade, which represents a potential novel treatment for PTSD.