Rate My Professor Scott Langenecker

Scott Langenecker, PhD, is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and Wexner Medical Center. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology from Marquette University in 2001. Earlier in his career, he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute at the University of Michigan from 2003 to 2012. He currently holds an adjunct professorship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Utah.

A clinical neuropsychologist and neuroimaging specialist, Dr. Langenecker assesses and treats mood and anxiety disorders in patients aged 12 through adulthood, with emphasis on therapy for depression and neuropsychological evaluations during life transitions such as adolescence to adulthood. His research specializations include lifespan models of mood disorders focusing on the adolescent-to-adult transition, neuropsychology and neuroimaging task development, brain changes with interventions via neuroimaging, and innovations in skill development and intervention strategies. He examines neurobiological features of mood disorders in relation to onset, course, treatment responsivity, attrition likelihood, recurrence risk, suicide risk, childhood adversity effects, family cohesion buffering, and disability risk. Key projects encompass the State of Ohio Adversity and Resilience (SOAR) study, a multimodal family-based longitudinal investigation of mental health and substance use disorder risks and resilience; rumination-focused cognitive behavioral therapy for depression prevention in youth; studies on rumination, error-related brain activity, cortical thickness in major depressive and bipolar disorders; and smartphone-based digital phenotyping for cognitive function in mood disorders. Dr. Langenecker has published over 350 papers garnering more than 9,000 citations. Select publications include "Cortical Thickness Associated with Past Year Mood Episode in Major Depressive and Bipolar Disorders" (2026, Psychiatry Research - Neuroimaging), "State of Ohio Adversity and Resilience (SOAR) study protocol" (2025, BMJ Open), "Rumination-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Reduces Rumination and Targeted Cross-network Connectivity in Youth With a History of Depression: Replication in a Preregistered Randomized Clinical Trial" (2023), and "Keying Into Cognition: Temporal Smoothing of Smartphone Typing Behaviors for Passive Assessment of Processing Speed and Executive Function in Individuals With Mood Disorders" (2026). He belongs to the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, International Neuropsychological Society, and Society of Biological Psychiatry.