PSYCHIATRY
LONGEVITY
HEALTH
/robby
Robert Raeder is a medical scientist primarily interested in metabolic psychiatry, longevity, and health optimization. He is currently a Research Principal at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s (UPMC) Western Psychiatric Hospital, working within the Phillips Mood and Brain Lab under the direction of Professor Mary L. Phillips, MD, MD (Cantab). The lab spans three centers: the Center for Neural Circuit-Based Technology Interventions in Psychiatry, the Center for Research in Translational and Developmental Affective Neuroscience, and the Center for Translational Research Incorporating Metabolism. Robert’s work integrates these areas, with a focus on a clinical trial investigating the ketogenic diet in bipolar disorder, and on identifying neural and behavioral markers of mania/hypomania risk to improve early diagnosis and inform metabolically targeted interventions.
Additionally, Robert is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Professor Nicola Clayton FRS. Here, his research investigates Bayesian aspects of autobiographical memory by using psychiatric pathologies as comparative models, with particular interest in how various pathologies may impair one’s ability to mentally simulate the future. This line of research also seeks to explore neurobiological processes involved in integrating spatiotemporal information in the brain to form subjective experience and make meaning, as well as how these processes may be disrupted in various psychopathologies.
Previously, Robert earned an MSc in Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health from The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London, where his research explored phenomena related to traumatic memories in PTSD, as well as implications for effective interventions. He also holds an MA from the University of London and a BA from Point Park University.
An avid runner himself, Robert collaborates with Dr. Jeffrey Brown, lead psychologist for the Boston Marathon, to elucidate the standard of psychological care provided at the Boston Marathon and to understand the bi-directional relationship between psychological factors and marathon running.
Earlier in his career, Robert worked one-on-one with individuals to achieve evidence-based health outcomes, with clients ranging from international supermodels to Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award winners, as well as military veterans, domestic violence survivors, and formerly incarcerated individuals. Using personalized strategies, he has helped clients lose significant weight and overcome chronic health challenges, while also supporting their efforts to publish books, launch businesses, earn promotions, start families, and live more meaningful lives.
/affiliations
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Featured: The Mind Diet
The ability to mentally wander through space, time, and into the minds of others is at the heart of human cognition, but it also forms the basis of storytelling. It is therefore vital that you enter the minds of some of the greatest thinkers in human history in order to structure your own thinking.
Professor Harold Bloom on why you should read great works:
“Because you will be haunted by great visions: of Ishmael, escaped alone to tell us; of Oedipa Mass, cradling the old derelict in her arms; of Invisible Man, preparing to come up again; like Jonah, out of the whale’s belly. All of them, on some of the higher frequencies, speak to and for you. We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure. Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing...”
