Appendix A

Speaker Biographical Sketches

Huda Akil, Ph.D., is focused on understanding the neurobiology of emotions, including pain, anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Research in the Akil laboratory is focused on understanding the neurobiology of emotions, including pain, anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Early on, Dr. Akil’s research focused on the role of the endorphins and their receptors in pain and stress responsiveness. She provided the first physiological evidence for a role of endogenous opioids in the brain and showed that endorphins are activated by stress and cause pain inhibition, a phenomenon termed stress-induced analgesia. Dr. Akil defined how the posttranslational processing of opioid precursors is modulated by stress, and demonstrated the coordinated actions of the neuropeptide products on behavior. Dr. Akil collaborated with Dr. Stanley Watson in a series of studies characterizing the anatomy of the opioid peptides and their receptors. The Akil and Watson research groups collaboratively cloned two types of opioid receptors and conducted structure–function analyses defining the molecular basis of high affinity and selectivity toward the endogenous ligands. Dr. Akil is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.

B. J. Casey, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Yale University and an adjunct professor at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, where she holds appointments in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and an adjunct appointment at The Rockefeller University. Dr. Casey is a world leader in human neuroimaging and its use in typical

and atypical development. She skillfully uses brain imaging to uniquely examine developmental transitions across the life span, especially during the period of adolescence. Her work is grounded in translational studies from genetically altered mice to humans to patients, developing models for several mental heath problems that affect millions of young people today. Her studies have begun to inform when and how to target treatments to the individual based on age and genetic profile (i.e., precision medicine) and her discoveries have been highlighted by NPR, PBS, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic and have implications for juvenile justice and mental health policy reform. Dr. Casey has served on several advisory boards, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Board of Scientific Counselors and NIMH Council; the Scientific Advisory Board for NARSAD; the Advisory Board for the Human Connectome Project—Life Span Study; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board of Children, Youth, and Families; and the National Academies committees on the science of adolescent risk taking, assessing juvenile justice reform, and sports-related concussions in youth. She has received funding from NIMH, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Science Foundation, the John Merck Fund, the Dana Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. She has been asked to present her work on the adolescent brain to congressional staff on Capitol Hill, to the Washington State Supreme Court, and to federal judges around the country. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including an honorary doctorate from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and she is the author of nearly 200 publications. Dr. Casey is someone who takes the training of the next generation of scientists as seriously as her own research, about which she is passionate.

Damien A. Fair, P.A.-C., Ph.D., is an associate professor of behavioral neuroscience and psychiatry at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), as well as an associate scientist at OHSU’s Advanced Imaging Research Center, principal investigator (PI) and co-PI on studies of typical and atypical brain development and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) brain development. His laboratory focuses on mechanisms and principles that underlie the developing brain. The majority of this work uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and resting state functional connectivity MRI to assess typical and atypical populations. A second focus has become testing the feasibility of using various functional and structural MRI techniques in translational studies of developmental neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., ADHD and autism). Dr. Fair’s lab is exploring ways to better characterize individual patients

with these psychopathologies to help guide future diagnostic, therapeutic, and genetic studies.

Jennifer J. Manly, Ph.D., is a professor of neuropsychology in neurology at the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center and the Taub Institute for Research in Aging and Alzheimer’s disease at Columbia University. She completed her graduate training in neuropsychology at the San Diego State University/University of California, San Diego, Joint Doctoral Program in clinical psychology. After a clinical internship at Brown University, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University. Her research on cultural, medical, and genetic predictors of cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s disease among African Americans and Hispanics has been funded by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association. She has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and 8 chapters. In 2002 she was awarded the Early Career Award from Division 40 of the American Psychological Association (APA), and in 2004 she was elected a fellow of APA. She serves on the Department of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Council on Alzheimer’s Research, Care, and Services, and she is a member of the Alzheimer’s Association Medical & Scientific Research Board. She currently serves as a member at large on the Board of Governors of the International Neuropsychological Society.

Bruce S. McEwen, Ph.D., was the Alfred E. Mirsky Professor at The Rockefeller University. A major figure in behavioral neuroendocrinology, Dr. McEwen produced a massive body of important work on the roles of steroid hormones in reproductive behavior, brain development, gene expression in the brain, brain plasticity in adulthood, and the effects of stress on age-related brain degeneration that causes cognitive deficits. As a neuroscientist and a neuroendocrinologist, he studied environmentally regulated, variable gene expression in the brain mediated by circulating steroid hormones and endogenous neurotransmitters in relation to brain sexual differentiation and the actions of sex, stress, and thyroid hormones on the adult brain. He combined molecular, anatomical, pharmacological, physiological, and behavioral methodologies and related his findings to human clinical information. He found receptors for adrenal steroids in the hippocampus that are transcription factors, a discovery that triggered an ever-growing number of studies throughout the world on the neural effects of adrenal steroids and stress on the hippocampus. Dr. McEwen was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.

Bruce L. Miller, M.D., holds the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professorship in Neurology at the University of California,

San Francisco (UCSF). He directs the busy UCSF dementia center where patients in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond receive comprehensive clinical evaluations. His goal is the delivery of model care to all of the patients who enter the clinical and research programs at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. Dr. Miller is a behavioral neurologist focused on dementia with special interests in brain and behavior relationships as well as the genetic and molecular underpinnings of disease. Dr. Miller is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.