Introduction to neuropsychopharmacology

Guy Goodwin, DPhil, FMedSci, is currently a research fellow and former WA Handley Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. His research interests are in the treatment of bipolar disorder and the application of neuroscience in understanding the neurobiology of mood disorders, with a focus on developing new treatments. He has been a lead investigator in clinical trials for bipolar affective disorder, including the BALANCE and CEQUEL studies. He works with industry in developing translational models of psychotropic drug action in man. He is a past President of the British Association for Psychopharmacology (2004–2005) and European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) and an Emeritus Senior Investigator on the faculty of UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). He is a Thomson Reuters highly cited researcher (top 1% in field).

Elisabeth Binder, MD PhD, is the director of the Department of Translational Research in Psychiatry at the Max-Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany. She also holds an appointment as Adjunct Professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA. After completing her MD at the Medical University of Vienne, Austria, she pursued a PhD in Neuroscience at Emory University. Her main research interests are the identification of molecular moderators of the response to environmental factors, with a focus on early adversity, gene x environment interactions and mediating epigenetic mechanisms. She studies how such factors influence trajectories to psychiatric disease or well-being to ultimately use this information for novel prevention and treatment strategies.

Andreas Reif studied Medicine from 1993 to 2000 at the University of Würzburg. Having decided that he wanted to work in the field of clinical neuroscience, he obtained his doctorate at the Department of Pharmacology (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. H.H.H.W. Schmidt), working on the catalytic mechanism of nitric oxide synthase type I (NOS1). He subsequently specialized in psychiatry, where - from early on - he complemented clinical work with research projects. During his clinical education at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Würzburg, he joined the research group of Prof. Klaus-Peter Lesch, where he initially focused on the genetic underpinnings of emotions and studied those in animal models. From 2003 onwards, he shifted his focus to adult ADHD, which is still one of his major areas of interest and expertise. In the last 15 years, he has intensively studied the neurobiological basis of this disorders. In doing so, he became a member of a tight network of researchers from many parts of the world, collaborating in the IMpACT consortium and the ECNP Network ADHD across the Lifespan, both of which he co-founded and co-leads. His second phenotype of interest are mood and anxiety disorders - especially bipolar disorder, depression, and panic disorders. During his work at the University of Würzburg, he got promoted several times up to the level of Vice Chair. In 2014, he moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he took over the Chair position of the Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy and established sections on Translational and Experimental Psychiatry. He serves in important positions on the boards of several societies, the most important ones being the DGPPN and ENCP. He currently coordinates the EU-funded CoCA consortium and is a work package leader in several additional EU-funded consortia. Andreas Reif has published more than 500 papers with a cumulative impact factor > 3.000 and amounting to an h factor of >80.

Prof. Meyer-Lindenberg is Director of the Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Institute, based in Mannheim, Germany, and Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Heidelberg in Heidelberg, Germany. He is board certified in psychiatry, psychotherapy, neurology. Before coming to Mannheim in 2007, he spent ten years as a scientist at the National Institutes of Mental Health, Bethesda, USA.

Gitte Moos Knudsen is Past-President of ECNP and professor at Dept. Neurology, Rigshospitalet and University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She is also chair of the ECNP TWG Psychedelics. She is a translational neurobiologist and clinical neurologist with interest in advanced methodological developments that she subsequently applies in her research to address pertinent neurobiological and clinical issues. Her scientific interests include the neurobiology of cerebral neurotransmission and neuropharmacological interventions with particular emphasis on brain imaging (PET, MR, SPECT, EEG). Her lab investigates human brain disease mechanisms and predicts brain responses to categories of neuromodulatory interventions as well as treatment efficacy. For this purpose, they use PET brain scanning to image brain receptors and receptor occupancy, and fMRI to evaluate drug effects on the brain hemodynamic response as well as the brains regional interactions, i.e., functional connectivity.

Gil Zalsman, M.D., M.H.A., graduated from the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel. He completed his psychiatry residency at the Geha Mental Health Center and Tel Aviv University and the Child Psychiatry residency at Geha and then at the Yale Child Study Center, Yale University, Connecticut, USA with the late Prof. Donald J Cohen. He completed a two years Post-Doctoral Fellowship with Prof. J John Mann, in the Division of Molecular Imaging and Neuropathology, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York City, USA, where he holds an ongoing position as an Adjunct Research Scientist. He also holds a Master degree in health administration (MHA summa cum laude) from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. His academic research focuses on suicidal behavior, gene-environment interactions in childhood depression and suicidal behavior and other psychiatric disorders in adolescence. Prof. Zalsman has more than 300 scientific publications more than 175 of which are original papers. Also dozens of reviews, book chapters and two edited books are included. He participated actively in more than a 280 scientific meetings. Currently he is the CEO and Medical Director of Geha Mental Health Center near Tel Aviv in addition to being the director of the Adolescent Day Unit. He is a full Professor of Psychiatry at the Sackler School of Medicine and a former director of its psychiatry continuing education program. Prof. Zalsman is a past board member and past president of the child psychiatry section at the Association of European Psychiatry (EPA) and past president of the Israeli Society of Biological Psychiatry (ISBP). He chaired the 14th European Symposium for Suicide and Suicidal Behavior (ESSSB) that was held in Tel Aviv in 2012 and co-chaired the IASR/AFSP annual suicide summit in Las Vegas in November 2017. Prof. Zalsman served as an invited speaker in major psychiatric meetings worldwide including APA, EPA and ECNP. He is married with two children and resides in Ramat Hasharon near Tel Aviv, Israel (www.zalsman.org).

Amir Krivoy is the director of research and of an inpatient rehab psychiatric ward at Geha Mental Health Center, Petach-Tikva, Israel, an associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel and a visiting researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College, London, UK. He is also the elected chair of the Isareli Society of Biological Psyciatry (ISBP). His clinical work and research interests involve treatment-refractory mental illness, rehabilitation and physical health of people with severe mental illness.