Sheng Zhang

Sheng Zhang, PhD, is an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. He holds appointments in the Connecticut Mental Health Center and focuses on neuroimaging studies of addiction, cognitive control, and emotional processing. Dr. Zhang completed his PhD at the University of Science and Technology of China in 2007 and a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University in 2012.

His research investigates neural mechanisms underlying addiction, particularly cocaine dependence and alcohol use disorders, using fMRI and other neuroimaging techniques. Key areas include error processing, reward/punishment sensitivity, and the role of brain networks like the default mode network and salience network. He also explores age-related changes in anxiety and emotional memory, as well as sex differences in neural responses to emotional stimuli.

Dr. Zhang has led clinical trials investigating thalamic and hypothalamic activity in cocaine dependence. His work has been published in journals such as Brain, NeuroImage, and Biological Psychiatry. Notable contributions include studies on ventromedial prefrontal cortex regulation of arousal, neural predictors of relapse in addiction, and functional connectivity of brain regions involved in cognitive control.

• Education: PhD, University of Science and Technology of China (2007)
• Postdoc: Yale University (2012)
• Affiliations: Connecticut Mental Health Center, Psychiatry Department