About

Ran Barzilay, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. He is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Research Scientist affiliated with the Lifespan Brain Institute and the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Barzilay's research focuses on understanding the factors that drive variability in brain and behavioral development in children and adolescents exposed to stress. His work particularly emphasizes mechanisms of risk and resilience that lead to youth suicidal behavior. Using large datasets of genotyped and deeply phenotyped youth, his research investigates how environmental exposures such as trauma and poverty interact with biological factors—including genetic, epigenetic, and immune components—to influence suicidal behavior. His goal is to conduct impactful translational science aimed at reducing teen suicide.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Medicine
• Psychiatry

Selected publications

• Pursuing the elusive biosignature for suicide: a decennial update

  Molecular Psychiatry · 2026-03-12

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Suicide is the second leading cause of death for American adolescents and young adults and is transdiagnostic. Suicide risk is impacted by genetic and both distal and proximal environmental factors, particularly stress exposures. This review encompasses the past 10 years of research comparing biological measures between suicide decedents and control decedents and identifies studies focused on stress-related biological pathways, inflammation, neuroplasticity, and the serotonergic system as candidate contributors. Inclusion criteria for studies aimed to maximize confidence that reported biological differences are specific to suicide and independent of confounding psychiatric comorbidity, addressing ambiguity in previous work. The review revealed evidence for alterations in stress-related biological systems and decreased serotonergic tone among suicide decedents. Methodological and conceptual advances over the past decade have driven a shift from hypotheses-driven to data-driven approaches, including genomic, transcriptomic and methylomic analyses. While multi-omic studies have the potential to identify mechanistic molecular targets, to date findings lack interpretability. This review highlights the need for research in larger samples, across multiple brain areas, and in specific cell types to fill a gap in system biology-guided multi-omic studies. Lastly, incorporating poly-environmental stress exposure (exposomic) models in suicide postmortem research may elucidate mechanisms linking environmental stress and biological measures, potentially increasing the reproducibility of postmortem suicide studies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 678. Neurocognitive Mechanisms Linking Adolescent Cannabis Use and Suicidal Behavior

  Biological Psychiatry · 2026-04-25

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• White matter reflects the childhood exposome

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2026-05-07

  articleOpen access

  The childhood environment is critical for brain development. However, most neuroimaging studies examine individual environmental measures (e.g., socioeconomic status) or a limited set of exposures, obscuring how the combination of complex, real-world exposures jointly influence brain development. Here we investigated how white matter shape and tissue properties are linked to the childhood exposome, a multidimensional measure capturing over 300 environmental exposures. Using multi-shell diffusion MRI from 8,183 children (ages 9-10) in the ABCD study, we quantified microstructural and macrostructural properties across 62 person-specific white matter tracts. The exposome showed widespread and highly replicable associations with both white matter microstructure and macrostructure: more advantaged environments were associated with larger tract macrostructure and lower orientation dispersion. Principal component analysis revealed that the dominant axis of exposome-white matter covariation aligns with the cortical sensorimotor-association hierarchy, such that tracts spanning this hierarchy exhibit the strongest associations with the exposome. Multivariate models demonstrated that patterns of white matter features explained 25% of the variance in the exposome in unseen individuals. Notably, white matter-based prediction of cognition was markedly reduced after accounting for the exposome (~82% reduction in explained variance), indicating that brain-cognition associations overlap substantially with variance captured by the exposome. These findings generalized to independent data from the Healthy Brain Network (n=869), which differs substantially from ABCD in MRI acquisition, participant selection, and childhood environments. Together, these results suggest that white matter architecture strongly reflects the childhood environment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 21. Smartphone Ownership is Associated With Cognitive Performance and Variance in Brain Structure in Early Adolescence

  Biological Psychiatry · 2026-04-25

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The PMADS Project: A Longitudinal Multimodal Cohort Study to Understand Risk for Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2026-04-14

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Background Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are among the most common and consequential complications of pregnancy. The perinatal period is also characterized by profound hormonal fluctuations and large-scale brain plasticity. However, the mechanisms linking these neurobiological changes to psychiatric risk are poorly understood. Prospective, clinically informed studies are needed to identify quantitative biomarkers and clarify pathways linking perinatal neurobiology to PMADs risk. Methods This report describes the design of a prospective, longitudinal cohort study integrating multimodal neuroimaging, biofluid sampling, and deep clinical phenotyping to enable precision characterization of neurobiological trajectories of PMADs risk. Twenty-five individuals at elevated risk for PMADs will be recruited prior to conception and followed across six in-person timepoints spanning the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and early postpartum, with additional remote follow-ups through the first postpartum year. Data collection includes high-resolution structural MRI, functional brain mapping using multi-echo resting-state fMRI, diffusion MRI, arterial spin labeling, ultra-high field MR-based techniques for measuring glutamate (GluCEST and 1 HMRS), biofluid sampling, and comprehensive clinical, behavioral, and cognitive assessments. Structured clinical interviews assess categorical diagnoses while dimensional symptom measures capture heterogeneity and transdiagnostic features of perinatal psychopathology. Longitudinal analyses will model nonlinear trajectories of brain and symptom change across the perinatal period as well as evaluate whether preconception network features and menstrual cycle-related brain changes are associated with subsequent perinatal symptom emergence. Discussion This cohort study establishes a longitudinal, multimodal framework for investigating neurobiological changes across the transition to pregnancy in individuals at elevated risk for PMADs. By anchoring pregnancy-related brain changes to preconception and menstrual cycle-related variability within the same individuals, this study is designed to evaluate associations between preconception hormone sensitivity, pregnancy-induced neuroplasticity, and PMADs risk. The resulting dataset will provide a deeply phenotyped longitudinal resource for investigating brain-behavior relationships across the perinatal period. Findings are expected to inform future larger-scale studies aimed at advancing mechanistic understanding of PMADs, improving individualized risk stratification, and supporting development of personalized preventive and neuromodulatory interventions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exposome and mental health across the lifespan: research and clinical perspectives

  Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026-03-09 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The exposome and attention-related brain networks jointly predict attention problems in early adolescence

  medRxiv · 2026-03-28

  articleOpen access

  Background: Attention problems are common transdiagnostic symptoms of psychiatric illness. Although environmental exposures and experiences influence attention during adolescent development, the underlying neural pathways by which they do so is unclear. Methods: We measured attention problems, attention-related brain networks, and multidimensional environmental experiences (the "exposome") using data from the ABCD Study (N = 11,878). We tested whether the exposome is associated with 9-10-year-olds' attention-related brain network strength and current and future attention problems. We further examined cross-sectional indirect pathways linking the exposome, brain network strength, and attention problems. Results: The exposome predicted youths' current and future self-, caregiver-, and teacher-reported attention problems as well as their current attention-related brain network strength. This brain network signature of sustained attention also predicted attention problems from all three reporters. Indirect effects models revealed that the exposome was associated with current reported attention problems both directly and indirectly though this brain signature. Conversely, predictive brain network strength was related to attention problems both directly and indirectly through the exposome. Conclusion: Interactions between environmental exposures, experiences, and brain network organization are associated with attention problems in early adolescence. These findings support a bidirectional framework linking the environment and functional brain networks in the development of attention problems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The exposome predicts youth sustained attention and attention-related brain network strength.

  2026-05-04

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Menarche onset is an inflection point for mental health and brain development

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2026-04-14

  articleOpen access

  Menarche is a normative milestone of female puberty, yet its role in adolescent mental health and brain development remains poorly understood. Using longitudinal data from 5,016 females (7 annual visits, ages 10-16 years) in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, we found that menarche onset functions as an inflection point for the development of internalizing symptoms and gross brain morphometry. The onset of menarche, largely independent of timing and socio-environmental factors, preceded a significant spike in internalizing symptoms, while altering the rate of ongoing structural brain development. Following menarche onset, individuals with faster declines in gray matter volume and surface area also had heightened internalizing symptoms. These findings suggest that menarche is not only a reproductive milestone but a neuroendocrine driver of adolescent brain and mental health trajectories. This normative and easily identifiable marker could define a critical window for mental health screenings with greater precision than current age-based guidelines.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 307. Disentangling the Association Between Adolescent Obesity and Suicide Attempts in a Large Pediatric Cohort

  Biological Psychiatry · 2026-04-25

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Mechanisms of resilience to developmental stress in children and adolescents.

  NIH · $775k · 2019–2023

• Predicting suicide attempt in youth by integrating EHR, clinical, cognitive and imaging data

  NIH · $499k · 2020–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Raquel E. Gur

  Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

  557 shared

• Tyler M. Moore

  California University of Pennsylvania

  484 shared

• Ruben C. Gur

  Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

  358 shared

• Elina Visoki

  Lifespan

  292 shared

• Monica E. Calkins

  University of Pennsylvania

  204 shared

• Grace E. DiDomenico

  Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

  203 shared

• Lauren K. White

  University of Pennsylvania Health System

  163 shared

• Laura Almasy

  University of Pennsylvania

  151 shared