Epigenetics and Neuroplasticity - Evidence and Debate

Schahram Akbarian studied medicine at the Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany. He is a board certified psychiatrist and molecular neuroscientist who trained at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge and the University of California at Irvine. In 2002, he joined the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester where he established a research program in psychiatric epigenetics and served as the Director of the Brudnick Neuropsychiatric Research Institute. Presently, he heads the Division of Psychiatric Epigenomics in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He is a former recipient of the Klerman award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the Judith Silver Memorial award of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the Outstanding resident award of the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Eva King Killam Award for Outstanding Translational Research, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.Dr. Akbarian has been a principal investigator on National Institutes of Health-funded research projects since 2001and published close to 100 articles in scientific journals and book chapters. He is a member of professional societies such as the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and presently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation and on Editorial Boards of various journals in the field