Joshua Gray PhD

Education

B.A., Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
M.S., Clinical Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Predoctoral Psychology Resident, Brown University, Providence, RI
Ph.D., Clinical Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA

Biography

Dr. Gray's research program seeks to better understand and treat addiction and associated phenotypes by: 1) increasing our understanding of their neurobiological basis, 2) leveraging genetics to identify novel targets and potential drugs for repurposing, and 3) improving the standard of care for civilians and service members struggling with addictive disorders.

Specific research topics include:
1) Genetic and neurobiological bases of addiction, cross-cutting phenotypes (e.g., impulsivity, personality), and comorbidities (e.g., suicidality, mTBI).
2) Military health services research related to improving care for soldiers who engage in harmful alcohol use.
3) Novel interventions for alcohol use disorder.

Many projects utilize large open datasets (e.g., https://www.humanconnectome.org/study/hcp-young-adult/overview; https://abcdstudy.org/about.html; http://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/about-biobank-uk/) and open source statistical packages, particularly R.

Dr. Gray's research has been funded by multiple federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Gray is PI of an ongoing National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism R01 award that aims to translate findings from genome-wide association studies of alcohol use to stimulate medication development for treating alcohol use disorder

Representative Bibliography

Owens, M. M., Hyatt, C. S., Xu, H., Thompson, M. F., Miller, J. D., Lynam, D. R., MacKillop, J., & Gray, J. C. (in press). Test-retest reliability of the neuroanatomical correlates of impulsive personality traits in the ABCD study. Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science

Gray, J. C., Murphy, M., Carter, S. E., Johnson, M. W., Wolfgang, A. S., Roy, M. J., & Maples-Keller, J. L. (2022). Beliefs and perceived barriers regarding psychedelic-assisted therapy in a pilot study of service members and veterans with a history of traumatic brain injury. Military Medicine. doi: 10.1093/milmed/usac400

Gray, J. C., Larson, M. J., Moresco, N., Ritter, G. A., Dufour, S., Milliken, C. S., & Adams, R. S. (2021). The association of engagement in substance use treatment with negative separation from the military among soldiers with post-deployment alcohol use disorder. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 221. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2021.108647

Gray, J. C., Thompson, M., Bachman, C., Owens, M. M., Murphy, M., & Palmer, R. H. C. (2020). Associations of cigarette smoking with gray and white matter in the UK Biobank. Neuropsychopharmacology. doi: 10.1038/s41386-020-0630-2

Adams, R. S., Dietrich, E. J., Gray, J. C., Milliken, C., Moresco, N., & Larson, M. J. (2019). Post-deployment screening in the Military Health System: An opportunity to intervene for possible alcohol use disorder. Health Affairs, 38(8), 1298-1306. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2019.00284

Gray, J. C., Schvey, N. A., & Tanofsky-Kraff, M. (2019). Demographic, psychological, behavioral, and cognitive correlates of BMI in youth: Findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Psychological Medicine. doi: 10.1017/S0033291719001545

Sanchez-Roige, S., Gray, J. C., MacKillop, J., Chen, Chi-Hua, & Palmer, A. A. (2018). The genetics of human personality. Genes, Brain and Behavior, 17(3), e12439. doi: 10.1111/gbb.12439

Gray, J. C., Owens, M. M., Hyatt, C. S., & Miller, J. D. (2018). No evidence for morphometric associations of the amygdala and hippocampus with the five-factor model personality traits in relatively healthy young adults. PLOS ONE. 9(13), e0204011. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204011