Professor
Psychology
Contact
| Office: | Expressway Tower 920 |
| Phone: | 214-768-3724 |
| Email: | tritz@smu.edu |
About
Dr. Ritz is currently accepting new graduate students
RESEARCH SUMMARY
The major area of research in my laboratory is the psychobiology of emotion, stress, and chronic disease, with both basic research and translational treatment studies. Our work has a special focus on respiratory disease, anxiety disorders, and depression. Typical topics are the psychophysiology and psychoneuroimmunology of the airways; the neuroscience of asthma; the autonomic and respiratory regulation in stress, anxiety, and depression; the psychophysiology of vagal activity; illness perception and behavioral medicine interventions in chronic respiratory disease; psychobiologically informed treatments for asthma, blood-injection-injury phobia, panic disorder, and anhedonia.
SELECTED RECENT PUBLICATIONS (*student authors or co-authors)
*Kroll, J.L., *Steele, A.M., Pinkham, A.E., Choi, C., Kahn, D.A., Patel, S.V., Chen, J.A., Aslan, S., Brown, E.S., & Ritz, T. (2018). Hippocampal metabolites in asthma and their implications for cognitive function. NeuroImage: Clinical, 19, 213-221.
Meuret, A.E., Ritz, T., Wilhelm, F., Roth, W.T., & Rosenfield, D. (2018). Therapeutic manipulation of end-tidal PCO2 in panic disorder– An interoceptive exposure training? Biological Psychiatry, Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging, 3, 539-545.
Ritz, T., *Trueba, A.F., Vogel, P.D., Auchus, R.J. & Rosenfield, D. (2018). Exhaled nitric oxide and vascular endothelial growth factor as predictors of cold symptoms after stress. Biological Psychology, 132, 126-140.
*Werchan. C.A., *Steele, A.M., Janssens, T., Millard, M.W., & Ritz, T. (2018). Towards an assessment of perceived COPD exacerbation triggers: Initial development and validation of a questionnaire measure. Respirology, Jul 13 [Epub ahead of print].
*Kroll, J.L., *Werchan, C.A., *Reeves, A.G., *Bruemmer, K.J., Lippert, A.R. & Ritz, T. (2017). Sensitivity of salivary hydrogen sulfide to psychological stress and its association with exhaled nitric oxide and affect. Physiology & Behavior, 179, 99-104.
Ritz, T., St. Laurent, C.D., Rosenfield, D., *Werchan, C.A., *Trueba, A.F., Vogel, P.D., Auchus, R.J. & Befus, A.D. (2017). A novel biomarker associated with distress in humans - Calcium Binding Protein, Spermatid Specific 1 (CABS1). American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, 312, R1004-R1016.
*Simon, E., Meuret, A.E., & Ritz, T. (2017). Sympathetic and parasympathetic cardiac responses to phobia-relevant and disgust-specific emotion provocation in blood-injection-injury phobia with and without fainting history. Psychophysiology, 54, 1512-1527.
Meuret, A.E., *Simon, E., & Ritz, T. (2017). Ultra-brief behavioral skill trainings for blood-injection-injury phobia. Depression and Anxiety, 34, 1096-1105.
Ritz, T., Wittchen, H.U., Klotsche, J., Mühlig, S., Riedel, O. & sap-NEEDs study group. (2016). Asthma trigger reports are associated with low quality of life, exacerbations, and emergency treatments. Annals of the American Thoracic Society, 13, 204-211.