Tony Yang

Tony Yang, MD, PhD, is a Professor in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and a key member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. His research is dedicated to understanding the neural mechanisms underlying adolescent psychiatric disorders, with a strong focus on major depressive disorder, trauma, and neurodevelopment.

Dr. Yang's research interests span adolescent mental health, neuroimaging (particularly fMRI and connectome analysis), emotional processing, mindfulness-based interventions, and the neuropsychiatric consequences of traumatic brain injury. His work investigates how brain network connectivity, especially in regions like the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, is altered in depression and how these changes relate to symptoms and treatment response. He is also deeply involved in large-scale international collaborations, most notably the ENIGMA consortium, which allows for powerful, multi-site analyses of brain structure and function in psychiatric conditions.

The trends in his publication record show a consistent and high-impact focus on using advanced neuroimaging and machine learning to identify biomarkers for depression and suicide risk. His articles frequently explore the structural and functional brain alterations associated with psychiatric disorders in youth, the effects of interventions like mindfulness and cognitive therapy, and the interplay between biological systems (e.g., gut microbiota, HPA axis) and brain health.

Dr. Yang has been the Principal or Co-Principal Investigator on several significant NIH-funded research projects, including:

• NIH R61AT009864: Neural mechanisms of meditation training in healthy and depressed adolescents.
• NIH R01MH085734: A cross-sectional and longitudinal fMRI study of adolescent depression.
• NIH K23MH070791: Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Depressed Adolescents.
• NIH F30MH010174: An early grant in the Neurosciences.

His research is conducted in collaboration with a wide network of scientists, including prominent researchers like Jeffrey Max, Martin Paulus, and Alan Simmons. He leads a research team that investigates brain circuitry in adolescents, utilizing MRI to study the effects of training programs like TARA (Training for Awareness, Resilience, and Action) and to understand the long-term psychiatric outcomes following pediatric traumatic brain injury.