About

Audrey R. Tyrka is the Mary E. Zucker Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University. She received her MD and PhD in medicine and psychology through a combined program at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. Dr. Tyrka completed her psychiatry residency at Brown and further specialized in clinical neuroscience at the Mood Disorders Research Program and Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience at Butler Hospital. She is also Co-Director of the COBRE Center for Stress, Trauma, and Resilience (STAR). Her research is internationally recognized for its groundbreaking work on early adversity, with discoveries related to neuroendocrine, epigenetic, and biological aging processes that underlie stress-associated mental and physical health conditions. Dr. Tyrka has contributed to pharmacologic, behavioral, and neuromodulation treatments for depression and serves as an attending psychiatrist in the Butler Hospital Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Clinic. She is a dedicated mentor and leader in research training, serving as Principal Investigator of a NIMH-funded research training program for physician scientists in psychiatry. Her research areas include anxiety disorders, behavior, childhood abuse, cortisol, depression, development, epigenetic aging, genetics, inflammatory markers, maltreatment, mitochondrial DNA, mood disorders, neurostimulation, psychoneuroendocrinology, stress, telomeres, and treatments for these conditions.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Medicine
• Biology
• Internal medicine
• Genetics
• Clinical psychology
• Computational biology
• Environmental health
• Developmental psychology
• Psychiatry
• Engineering ethics

Selected publications

• The Relationship Between ADHD Symptom Severity and Sleep Disturbance Using Accelerometer and the Subjective Sleep Disturbance Scale

  Journal of Attention Disorders · 2026-03-26

  articleOpen access

  Objective: There is limited evidence regarding the relationship between the severity of ADHD symptoms and the level of sleep disruption in early adolescent children. This study aimed to better understand this relationship by studying early adolescents from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study at the 2-year follow-up visit (mean age 12.0, n = 4,414). Methods: The “Attention Problems” scale of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) was used to measure the severity of ADHD symptoms for study participants. Sleep was assessed both subjectively with the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children (SDSC) via parent report and objectively by wrist-worn accelerometer assessment of sleep duration. Results: Total sleep disturbance showed a moderate positive correlation with ADHD symptoms ( r = .41, p < .001). In contrast, there was only a very small negative correlation between accelerometer-measured sleep duration and ADHD symptoms ( r = −.05, p < .001). Multivariate linear regression with total SDSC score as the dependent variable, adjusting for demographics, medication use, and puberty stage, showed a positive association of ADHD symptoms with total SDSC score (β = .41, 95% CI [0.38–0.44]; p < .001). A longitudinal linear mixed-effects model analysis with total SDSC score as the dependent variable also showed a positive association with ADHD symptoms with total SDSC score (β = .34, 95% CI [0.32–0.35]; p < .001). In contrast, multivariate linear regression with total sleep duration (in minutes) as the dependent variable showed only a very small negative association (β = −.03, 95% CI [−0.0–0.00]; p < .05). Conclusions: Our study shows that increased severity of ADHD symptoms is associated with worse sleep disturbance as measured by subjective parent reports; however, there is a very weak relationship between ADHD symptoms and objectively measured total sleep duration. The contrasting results are consistent with prior literature, and could be due to unmeasured variables such as deep sleep percentage or non-REM EEG delta wave power that are not captured by actigraphy. Alternatively, there is the possibility of mono-informant bias, as both the CBCL and SDSC are parent-reported, and parents may perceive relationship between worse ADHD symptoms and worse sleep disturbances, though the difference is objectively negligible.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Addressing the biological embedding of early life adversities (ELA) among adults through mindfulness: Proposed mechanisms and review of converging evidence

  UNC Libraries · 2026-03-26

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Establishment of the Society for the Advancement of Neuroscience and Psychiatry in Residency Research Education (Synapse): An Organization to Promote Research Training in Residency

  Academic Psychiatry · 2026-03-04

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Brief Report: Antecedents of Relationship Dynamics Among Primary Caregivers and Preschool-Aged Children Who Have Experienced Adversity

  Journal of Family Violence · 2025-02-18

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Examining the moderating role of adverse childhood experiences on the link between executive functioning and depressive/anger rumination among adolescents

  Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology · 2025-09-02 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  INTRODUCTION: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are theorized to amplify the effects of poor executive functioning (EF) leading to rumination. Though, few studies test this hypothesis among adolescents. Rumination is a transdiagnostic risk factor linked to mental health problems. We tested the moderating effect of ACEs (across informants) on the association between EF (measured using neutral and negative stimuli) and depressive and anger rumination. METHOD: = 14.86, SD = .50) who completed self-reports of lifetime ACEs, depressive and anger rumination, and the affective interference resolution task (a measure of EF). Additionally, a caregiver provided lifetime report of youth ACEs, and early childhood ACEs (3-5 years of age) were assessed using child protective records and caregiver interviews. RESULTS: = .046) after controlling for gender and current mental health problems; however, these effects were no longer significant when mental health problems were removed as a covariate. Furthermore, the interaction utilizing early childhood ACEs was not significant. Lastly, the interactions between ACEs and EF assessed with neutral information on depressive rumination and brooding were null. CONCLUSIONS: There is some support for the interactive relationship between EF and ACEs on rumination. However, statistical significance varies based on model specification and assessment of constructs. It is important to utilize multi-informants to assess ACEs, EF measured across valenced stimuli, and broad conceptualizations of rumination.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cohort Profile: Brazilian High-Risk Cohort for Mental Health Conditions (BHRC)

  International Journal of Epidemiology · 2025-10-14 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Multilevel and multimodal biobehavioral methods in the study of stress, trauma, and resilience: a systems approach

  Journal of Neural Transmission · 2025-06-09

  reviewOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Early life stress, psychiatric conditions, and mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn) in medically healthy young adults

  Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025-06-05 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 9. Early Life Stress Shapes How Obesity Measures Predict Epigenetic Aging and Metabolic Health

  Journal of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry · 2025-11-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Examining the biological impacts of parent–child relationship dynamics on preschool‐aged children who have experienced adversity

  Developmental Psychobiology · 2024-01-28 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Parent–child relationship dynamics have been shown to predict socioemotional and behavioral outcomes for children, but little is known about how they may affect biological development. The aim of this study was to test if observational assessments of parent–child relationship dynamics (cohesion, enmeshment, and disengagement) were associated with three biological indices of early life adversity and downstream health risk: (1) methylation of the glucocorticoid receptor gene ( NR3C1 ), (2) telomere attrition, and (3) mitochondrial biogenesis, indexed by mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) copy number (mtDNAcn), all of which were measured in children's saliva. We tested hypotheses using a sample of 254 preschool‐aged children ( M age = 51.04 months) with and without child welfare‐substantiated maltreatment (52% with documented case of moderate‐severe maltreatment) who were racially and ethnically diverse (17% Black, 40% White, 23% biracial, and 20% other races; 45% Hispanic) and from primarily low‐income backgrounds (91% qualified for public assistance). Results of path analyses revealed that: (1) higher parent–child cohesion was associated with lower levels of methylation of NR3C1 exon 1 D and longer telomeres, and (2) higher parent–child disengagement was associated with higher levels of methylation of NR3C1 exon 1 D and shorter telomeres. Results suggest that parent–child relationship dynamics may have distinct biological effects on children.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant K23MH067947

  NIH · $905k · 2009

• Childhood Maltreatment:Biomarkers of Risk and Resilience

  NIH · $2.6M · 2010–2016

• Childhood Maltreatment: Epigenetic Modulation of the Glucocorticoid Receptor

  NIH · $389k · 2011–2014

• Early Life Stress: Epigenetic Regulation of Endocrine and Immune Pathways

  NIH · $2.6M · 2014–2021

• NIH Grant F30MH010819

  NIH · $87k

Frequent coauthors

• Linda L. Carpenter

  Butler Hospital

  551 shared

• Lawrence H. Price

  522 shared

• Noah S. Philip

  Brown University

  256 shared

• Stephanie H. Parade

  Bradley Hospital

  141 shared

• Teresa E. Daniels

  Butler Hospital

  129 shared

• Kathryn K. Ridout

  Kaiser Permanente

  100 shared

• Hung‐Teh Kao

  Brown University

  95 shared

• Lawrence H. Sweet

  University of Georgia

  83 shared

Education

• M.D., Medicine and Psychology

  University of Pennsylvania

  1999

• Ph.D., Medicine and Psychology

  University of Pennsylvania

  1999