The Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience focuses on research into the pathophysiology and treatment of the major mental disorders, and is internationally recognized as one of the leading centers for schizophrenia research. Its grant portfolio includes two federally-funded Center grants, each totaling more than $1 million dollars each year, as well as numerous individual project and career-development grants from the National Institutes of Health as well as private foundations. Center investigators routinely publish in each of the top 5 journals in psychiatry, and have published in other high-impact journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Journal of Human Genetics, Human Molecular Genetics, and Neuroimage.  In recent years, Center investigators have published the first genomewide association study (GWAS) in the field of psychiatry, two important studies documenting clinical and cognitive response to initial treatment in schizophrenia, and a major study suggesting that treatment with antidepressants may play a role in preventing the onset of schizophrenia in at-risk adolescents.

The Center is comprised of two major Programs: the Program for Translational Research and the Program for Intervention and Services Research. The Program for Translational Research focuses on utilizing the modern tools of neuroscience to understand the pathophysiology of the major mental illnesses and to address the considerable heterogeneity of response to the psychotropic drugs used to treat them. Primary research modalities include molecular genetics, neuroimaging and cognitive neuropsychology.  The Program for Intervention and Services Research aims to enhance the treatment and outcome of patients with major mental illnesses, conducting clinical trials, outcome studies and novel research focused on the earliest stages of illness development and course. Together, the two programs house over a dozen laboratories, and provide an integrated approach to the understanding of these devastating and disabling brain disorders.

An important part of the mission of the Center is the pursuit of local, national, and international partnerships and collaborations.  Center Director John M. Kane, MD, is President of the Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS), and other senior investigators are founders or co-founders of international meetings and consortia in their subfields. Center co-Director, Anil K. Malhotra, MD is founder of the Pharmacogenetics in Psychiatry annual meeting, now in its eighth year, as well as a member of the international psychiatric GWAS consortium, which is pooling data from tens of thousands of psychiatric patients examined at institutions around the world to identify extremely subtle genetic causes of illness. Barbara A. Cornblatt, PhD, is co-founder of the North American Prodromal Longitudinal Study, which links 6 major centers in the United States and Canada in an effort to identify predictors of schizophrenia in teenagers.

The Center offers two post-doctoral Research Fellowship Programs, emphasizing clinical, molecular and biological approaches to the heterogeneity of psychiatric disorders. One program is for psychiatrists who have recently completed their residency or those residents entering their last year of training (R-4). The other program is for recent recipients of doctoral degrees in Psychology, Neuropsychology or Neuroscience. Both programs provide advanced training in research in schizophrenia, affective disorders and related disorders. Instruction in research methodology is provided through courses and supervision. Opportunities are available to work in the following specialized disciplines: clinical phenomenology including diagnosis and assessment, clinical psychopharmacology, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, [(positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)], and molecular genetics.

Fellows and residents are encouraged to develop independent research initiatives.

Administrative Staff