I am a clinical scientist and licensed psychologist who is interested in leveraging sleep and circadian function to promote mental health. I am driven to understand how sleep creates risk and protection for the onset and progression of psychopathology, and to what degree sleep interventions can prevent mental distress and impairment during key periods of neurodevelopment such as adolescence and young adulthood.
My current research evaluates a model in which short/late sleep and stressful life events during adolescence and young adulthood contribute to symptoms of depression and alcohol use disorder by disrupting reward- and stress-related brain function. This research uses mixed methodologies, including measures of psychiatric symptoms, behavior (e.g., actigraphy, performance on cognitive paradigms), peripheral physiology (e.g., electrocardiography, neuroendocrine function, immune function), and brain function (e.g., electroencephalography, functional MRI).
Dr. Casement will be accepting new graduate students for Fall 2027. Graduate students will be expected to work with data from Dr. Casement's NIH-funded projects (R01AA029125, R01MH126109). Preferred experience includes preprocessing and analysis of fMRI data.
Selected publications:
*Denotes student authors
Kim, S. & Casement, M. D. (2026) The sweet spot of weekend catch-up sleep: U-shaped associations with internalizing symptoms in adolescents from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. Sleep, 49(7), zsag113. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsag113
Carbone, J. T., & Casement, M. D. (2025). Biomarker profiles of sleep disturbance in adolescence: Results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2015–2020. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 180, 107532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2025.107532
Niu, X.*, Zhou, S.*, & Casement, M.D. (2021). The feasibility of at-home sleep extension in adolescents and young adults: A meta-analysis and systematic review. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 58, 101443. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2021.101443
Casement, M.D., Livingston, N.R.*, Allen, N.A., & Forbes, E.E. (2020). Feasibility, acceptability, and affective consequences of at-home sleep extension in young women with depressive symptoms: A pilot study. Journal of Sleep Research, 30(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.13045
Casement, M.D., Keenan, K.E., Hipwell, A.E., Guyer, A.E., & Forbes, E.E. (2016). Neural reward processing mediates the relationship between insomnia symptoms and depression in adolescence. SLEEP, 39(2), 439-447. https://doi.org/10.5665/sleep.5460
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