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Presented by:
Mascha van 't Wout-Frank, PhD

About the Webinar: 
Exposure-based therapies remain the gold standard for treating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), yet many patients experience incomplete remission. Recent clinical trial data suggest that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) offers a pathway to augment exposure therapy. This webinar will review the neurobiological underpinnings of extinction in PTSD, present new findings on the impact of tDCS, and discuss implications for optimizing exposure-based treatments.

Learning Objectives:
By the end of this activity, participants will be able to:
- Describe the role of extinction learning and retention in PTSD and its neurobiological underpinnings.
- Explain the mechanism of tDCS and how it can be applied to modulate extinction and habituation in PTSD.
- Evaluate the potential clinical implications of neuromodulation for enhancing psychotherapy outcomes.

About the Speaker:
Mascha van 't Wout-Frank, PhD, is an Associate Professor (Research) in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. She received her masters in clinical neuropsychology in 2001 and her PhD in cognitive neuropsychiatry in 2006 focusing on emotional processing in schizophrenia both from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Following the completion of her PhD she obtained a grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to pursue postdoctoral training in the field of neural decision science at the Department of Psychology, University of Arizona and before becoming an Assistant Professor (Research) at Brown in 2011. 
Dr. van ‘t Wout-Frank pursues a programmatic, bench-to-bedside approach at the intersections of cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry with the goal to test and develop novel interventions to reduce psychiatric symtoms and improve quality of life. She has a longstanding research interest in the role of emotional processing in psychiatry, spanning early work on delineating social-emotional functioning in schizophrenia that also encompassed the neural mechanisms by which emotion influences interpersonal decision-making. For the last 10 or so years, her research centers on the therapeutic potential of non-invasive brain stimulation approaches for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its common comorbidities, such as depression and substance use disorder, as well as PTSD prevention. 
She serves on the editorial boards of multiple peer-reviewed journals, regularly contributes as a scientist reviewer to various grant review panels, and is the current president of the Psychiatric Research Society, where she tries to keep things both scientifically rigorous and exciting. 

Intended Audience:
Licensed psychologists and neuropsychologists

The Massachusetts Neuropsychological Society is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Massachusetts Neuropsychological Society maintains responsibility for this program and its content.