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Mary L Woody, PhD

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry

Mary Woody, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and a licensed psychologist. Dr. Woody’s interests and expertise meet at the confluence of clinical psychology, cognitive-affective neuroscience, and health equity with a focus on affective disorders (depression, anxiety) across development. Her research investigates affect-biased information processing across multiple levels of analysis, including neuroimaging (EEG) and ambulatory assessment (augmented reality and mobile eye tracking headsets). Her long-term research interests include using these assessment tools to 1) identify mechanisms underlying affective disorders and 2) develop novel interventions to target these mechanisms.

Her ongoing NIMH Career Development Award (K23) tests if a novel EEG-based measure of affect-biased attention can be used to 1) predict future trajectories of depression among adolescent girls with a maternal history of major depressive disorder and 2) provide neurofeedback about affect-biased attention. A NARSAD Young Investigator Award examines how exposure to vicarious racial discrimination may increase risk for depression among Black adolescent girls enrolled in the K23 study, in part via attentional vigilance for threat of future discrimination. Finally, an internal PInCh award is extending the K23 neurofeedback protocol to a precision closed loop brain-computer interface that uses augmented reality to display person-specific digital distractors in adolescents’ real-world environments during activities of daily living while simultaneously providing neurofeedback to reduced attention to distractors.