Thomas Neylan, MD
Dr. Neylan is a Professor, In Residence in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the Director of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) Clinic and the Stress and Health Research Program at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. His research has focused on the role of sleep in emotion regulation, cognitive function, and metabolic health, in patients with PTSD, and more recently in aging populations with neurodegenerative disorders. He has been a Principal Investigator on multiple funded projects sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Justice, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and several foundations.
His current funding includes projects examining the role of disturbed sleep on prefrontal executive control and emotion regulation in PTSD, the role of sleep and circadian factors in risk and resilience for developing PTSD in acutely traumatized patients seen in Emergency Departments, a trial examining effects of exercise for PTSD, a human-animal translational study examining the role of maladaptive myelination as a mechanism underpinning the structural and functional brain abnormalities associated with exposure to traumatic stress, and joint clinical and brain bank study of sleep/wake regulation in neurodegenerative tauopathies. Dr. Neylan directs the PTSD Research program at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and is the PI on the PTSD component of the Sierra Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center which provides infrastructure support to investigators and fellows conducting PTSD research.