Training in the Neuroscience of Mental Health

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 DESCRIPTION: The objective of this training program (the Biomedical Neuroscience Training Program) is to develop and train basic and clinical scientists to understand the biology of the brain and mind and to be well versed in current therapies for psychiatric illness. The trainees are presented with a program that allows them to do research in a number of laboratories studying anything from the molecular and cellular biology of neurons to imaging of the brain in psychiatric patients. This comprehensive program allows trainees to develop novel experimental approaches to both discovery and therapy. The Biomedical Neuroscience Training Program also instills skills necessary to help clinical trainees more effectively research the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of psychiatric disease. Our challenge is to integrate molecular and cellular neurobiology with higher order systems so that the confluence between brain and mind can be better understood. Trainers have been carefully selected to provide an environment where basic and clinical trainees will enrich each other's experience and learn to work together in the spirit of truly translational research. These trainers are housed in several departments within the College of Medicine (as well as a few in the College of Arts and Sciences and Pharmacy) at UIC, but are committed to the training program as a single entity. Candidates are a mix of graduate students (both PhD and MD/PhD) and postdoctoral fellows (both psychiatry residents and clinical psychology fellows). Thus, in addition to research training, a specific goal of the program is to train psychiatrists/psychologists to engage in research and to excite basic scientists about the possibility of a career in translational neuroscience. Furthermore, those doing basic neurobiology become attuned to the implications of their research for mental health. The program also supports a series of colloquia expected to deliver current data and speculation about both basic and clinical neuroscience. Finally, it is emphasized that strength of this program is its ability to recruit and train underrepresented minorities and to bring them into the ranks of researchers in neurobiology, psychiatry and clinical psychology. This program is committed to the principle that ALL trainees benefit from diversity.